Ride The Cyclone

**Ride the Cyclone** is a Canadian musical written by Jacob Richmond and Brook Maxwell. It is the the second piece of media in the Uranium Teen Scream Trilogy. It follows the stories of the spirits of six teenagers who were in the St. Cassian High School chamber choir that are summoned after perishing on a roller coaster accident. The six teenagers are informed that one of them will be resurrected, and they have to plead their case as to why they deserve it the most.

## Plot

When the Saint Cassian Choir (Ocean O'Connell Rosenberg, Noel Gruber, Mischa Bachinski, Ricky Potts, Jane Doe and Constance Blackwood) travels to the Wonder Ville Traveling Fair to compete in the Kiwanis International Singing Competition they all meet their deaths as they rode the cyclone, the reasons explained by The Amazing Karnak in The Uranium Suite. As they enter a limbo sort-of state they are greeted by Karnak as he tells them that one of the group will be able to be resurrected to continue life. He also adds a prophecy, "The one who wants to win it the most shall redeem the loser in order to complete the whole."

Ocean starts to explain to Karnak that she is the best option, and sings What the World Needs, essentially telling everybody that she is the best of the group and that the others don't deserve it. After her song Karnak tells her that it would be a unanimous vote for the resurrection.

The second singer is Noel. Karnak offers a mariachi band to back up the song, which he suggests, should be able affordable Mexican cuisine. Instead he sings about his desires to be a sex-worker in post-War-France in Noel's Lament.

Mischa sings two songs, the first being This Song is Awesome where he sings about his awesome life, which is extremely ironic given his whole tragic background, and then, as his second number, he sings about Talia his online fiancée, in the song, Talia. Here he sings about his wishes in the living world to have married the positive commenter on his YouTube Channel, 'Bad Egg'.

Ricky sings about the story he thinks about as he was ignored on the playground at school in Space Age Bachelor Man. Here he says that he is the savior of the fictional world Zolar, populated by cat-people and/or cats. He says he received a message from some of the cat-men to make love to the cat-women. After he does that he is then told that the K-9 army is attacking. He declines the offer and states that he is only a lover, not a fighter. Peace was restored. He conceded after the song.

Jane sings about not knowing who she was or how she looked like in The Ballad of Jane Doe. This makes all the choir members sympathise with her, resulting in her own little birthday party. After they realise that the original birthday song has to include a name, Ocean creates a new one, The New Birthday Song.

Finally Constance sings in the song Sugar Cloud. This song is about her realising that she loved the world she lived in, and that she now enjoys the life she left behind, almost like she regrets loathing it all along.

Karnak states that the vote will now be discontinued and that the person who will be resurrected will be based upon the highest scoring student, who is Ocean. Ocean finds out the meaning of the prophecy and chooses for Jane to be resurrected as Penny Lamb. Karnak and Virgil both die as Virgil chews through the rubber, as Karnak predicted. This leaves the rest of the group to fully die, and they go out singing It's Not a Game/It's Just a Ride.

## Characters

### The Amazing Karnak

An omniscient fortune telling machine who can accurately predict the time, place and cause of someone's death, but is unable to tell them, possibly due to his 'Family Fun Novelty Mode'.

### Virgil The Rat

A rat, made to play the bass by Karnak, that has been slowly chewing through Karnak's power cable for the past two years, causing both of them to die at the end of the show.

### Ocean O'Connell Rosenberg

#### "The Most Successful Girl in Town"

Overachiever, straight-A student and choir captain with a superiority complex, Ocean is a self proclaimed social Darwinist, Buddhist, Christian and Jew who believes the other members of the choir will never amount to anything in life.

### Noel Gruber

#### "The Most Romantic Boy in Town"

The only gay boy in their small conservative town, Noel is obsessed with tragedy and New Wave French cinema and secretly fantasizes of being a sex worker named Monique Gibeau in Post-War France, but instead works a job he hates at the Taco Bell in their local megamall.

### Mischa Bachinski

#### "The Angriest Boy in Town"

A Ukrainian adoptee with a drinking problem who was brought to Canada after his dying mother lied about his age on his birth certificate. His adoptive parents, expecting a toddler and instead getting a full grown teenager, put him in the basement and left him to his own devices, making him turn to "the last bastion of pure strength and masculinity in society", commercialized hip-hop. On his YouTube channel where he posted his music, he met a fellow Ukrainian named Natalia who eventually became his full time online fianceé.

### Ricky Potts

#### "The Most Imaginative Boy in Town"

Born with an unnamed disease that left him unable to walk or talk, Ricky was ignored by his peers most of his life, causing his overactive imagination to create a fictional cat planet named Zolar, that he, as the character "Space Age Bachelor Man", rescues.

### "Jane Doe"

#### "The Most Forgettable Girl in Town"

The one unidentified body of the Cyclone Accident, she was decapitated when the roller coaster derailed and her head was never found, causing her to be unidentified, buried as a 'Jane Doe'. This caused her to forget her own life during the events of Ride the Cyclone.

### Constance Blackwood

#### "The Nicest Girl in Town"

A seemingly innocent and sweet girl with a secret self-loathing and dirty side, she reveals she lost her virginity to a carnie in a porta-potty just hours before the accident and describes how she secretly began to hate both herself and her family for having pride in their town after she got to high school and how guilty she felt about it.

Characters who were cut in the early Canadian run of the show include: Astrid: Ocean's older cousin who is believed to be from a Nordic country, Hank: Astrid's boyfriend who used mobility aids, Corey Ross: an early version of Mischa, and Trishna: a shy girl was interested in entomology.

## Songs

* Karnak's Dream of Life
* Fall Fair Suite
* Uranium Suite
* What the World Needs
* Noel's Lament
* Every Story's Got A Lesson
* This Song is Awesome
* Talia
* Space Age Bachelor Man
* The Ballad of Jane Doe
* The New Birthday Song
* Sugar Cloud
* It's Not a Game/It's Just a Ride
* A World Inside
* Waiting For the Drop
* Be Safe, Be Good (For Rachel)

#### Cut Songs

* Tragic Fact
* Play to Win
* Corey's Rap
* U-R-A-N-I-U-M

## Cast

1. ↑ https://www.playbill.com/article/new-musical-ride-the-cyclone-opens-tonight