this week in theater

NYC BROADWAY WEEK WINTER 2017

NATASHA, PIERRE & THE GREAT COMET OF 1812 are among shows participating in two-for-one Broadway Week promotion (photo by Chad Batka)

BROADWAY WEEK: 2-for-1 Tickets
January 17 – February 5, buy one ticket, get one free
www.nycgo.com/broadwayweek

Tickets are on sale for the winter edition of Broadway Week, which runs January 29 to February 5 and offers theater lovers a chance to get two-for-one tickets in advance to see new and long-running shows on the Great White Way. Nineteen shows are participating, but two are already sold out — Dear Evan Hansen and Oh, Hello — so you need to act fast. You can still grab seats, however, for Aladdin, Beautiful: The Carole King Musical, A Bronx Tale, Cats, Chicago, Cirque du Soleil Paramour, The Front Page, In Transit, Jitney, Kinky Boots, The Lion King, Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812, On Your Feet! The Story of Emilio and Gloria Estefan, The Phantom of the Opera, School of Rock, and Waitress. You can also get $20 upgrades by using the code BWAYUP.

NEVER BEFORE, NEVER AGAIN

never-before-never-again

Triskelion Arts
Muriel Schulman Theater
106 Calyer St. (enter on Banker St.)
January 5-8, $16-$20
www.triskelionarts.org

Most of the winter performance festivals, such as Under the Radar, COIL, Prototype, and American Realness, consist of experimental works that have either already been performed elsewhere or will afterward. However, the nonprofit Triskelion Arts, which was founded in Brooklyn in 2000 to “foster the development and presentation of the performing arts,” has something very different in mind with its “Never Before, Never Again” festival, which consists of dance, music, comedy, theater, poetry, and other disciplines in improvisational performances that have never been presented before and never will again quite like they will be during the third annual event, running January 5-8. The improv celebration begins January 5 with the Lovelies; Alyssa Gersony; Judah Levenson, Hank Mason, and Shane Gertner; kamrDANCE; NOW ACCEPTING ALL OFFERS MADE; and Katelyn Halpern & Dancers. On January 6, the lineup features Schmidt / Keenoy Movement / Sound Lab; slowdanger; Jog Films; Debbie Z & Friends; and the Lovelies. Saturday’s roster boasts Mauri Connors and Mindy Toro; TanzKlub; the Shelburne Trio (bassist Kevin Farrell, dancer Rachel Mckinstry, and poet Josh Adler); stb x at; Sarah Foster / MoveWorks; and Boom Bat Gesture Performance Group. The festival concludes January 8 with Ali Perkins; Kirsten Schnittker; Jason Mears / Quentin Tolimieri; There’s No Law (Rachel Cohen, Michael Henry, Irene Siegel); and Lokasparsa Dance Projects / clyde forth. Tickets are $16 in advance, $20 at the door to check out these now-you-see-it, now-you-don’t performances.

THE STRANGE UNDOING OF PRUDENCIA HART

Melody Grove stars as the title character in THE STRANGE UNDOING OF PRUDENCIA HART at the McKittrick Hotel (photo by Jenny Anderson)

The Heath in the McKittrick Hotel
542 West 27th St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
Extended through April 23, $65-$125
www.strangeundoing.com
www.mckittrickhotel.com

Since March 2011, audiences in masks have been roaming around the McKittrick Hotel in Chelsea, following characters into nearly every nook and cranny in Punchdrunk’s Sleep No More, a show, inspired by Macbeth, that redefined immersive theater. Now the same production company, Emursive, is presenting a twist on theatrical immersion with the National Theatre of Scotland’s international hit The Strange Undoing of Prudencia Hart, which continues at the McKittrick’s Heath Bar through April 23. This time, instead of the audience chasing the characters, the characters, who don masks at one point, move throughout the pub, talking to audience members, weaving around the space, sitting and standing on tables and chairs, and requesting audience help manufacturing some paper props. Created by writer David Greig (who appropriately enough wrote Dunsinane, a sequel to Macbeth) and director Wils Wilson, The Strange Undoing is about Edinburgh academic Prudencia Hart (Melody Grove), who is attending a conference in Kelso on border ballads, folk songs that were most famously written and collected by Sir Walter Scott. Also at the conference is Prudencia’s archrival, the motorcycle-riding Dr. Colin Syme (Paul McCole), who is described as “Dr. Colin Syme blokeish — obsessed with his kit / He’d eat himself if he was a biscuit.” (Much of the tale is related in delightful rhythmic couplets.) Snowed in on Midwinter’s Night, the prudish Prudencia rejects Colin’s offer to stay with him and instead makes her way through a Costco parking lot to a bed and breakfast that appears to be run by the devil himself (Peter Hannah). Meanwhile, musical director Alasdair Macrae and Annie Grace play multiple roles as well as various instruments, singing traditional ballads in addition to shanties written for the show, imbedded with a sly sense of humor. There’s even karaoke.

The National Theatre of Scotland’s THE STRANGE UNDOING OF PRUDENCIA HART is devilishly good fun (photo by Jenny Anderson)

There are also plenty of self-referential treats. “This is exactly the sort of snow that if it were in a border ballad would poetically presage some kind of doom for an innocent heroine or an encounter on the moor with a sprite or villain or the losing of the heroine’s selfhood in the great white emptiness of the night,” Prudencia says at a critical juncture. Movement director Janice Parker keeps the cast, dressed in terrific period costumes with a contemporary twist, from knocking into the customers on Georgia McGuinness’s set, as references are made to the Proclaimers and Kylie Minogue, such topics as “Border Ballads: Neither Border nor Ballad?” and “The Topography of Hell in Scottish Balladry” are raised, the legendary ballad character Tam Lin is discussed, and free shots of Scotch are offered before the show and complimentary finger sandwiches are passed around at intermission. As with Sleep No More, the more you invest yourself into the proceedings, the more you will get out of it. Our enjoyment of the production was enhanced by our tablemates, who just happened to be the parents of one of the actors, making for some great conversation and many toasts. It’s all devilishly good fun, a time-traveling ballad that would make Sir Walter Scott proud.

WINTER 2017 PERFORMANCE FESTIVALS

Bobbi Jene Smith and Keir GoGwilt team up for A STUDY ON EFFORT at Invisible Dog Center as part of COIL festival

The always exciting winter performance festival season gets under way right after New Year’s, with a slew of popular programs occurring all over town and in multiple boroughs. PS122’s COIL 2017 festival, the last under artistic director Vallejo Gantner, consists of fourteen events, with a dozen performances, a sewing bee, and the Red + White Party. The Public Theater’s fourteenth annual Under the Radar fest includes twenty-one programs, centering on experimental music, theater, and dance, along with postshow discussions and the Incoming festival within a festival. The NYC Winter Jazzfest will celebrate the centennial of Thelonius Monk’s birth while also concentrating on social justice. Focusing on “socially and aesthetically marginal and subversive artists tearing at the boundaries of form and wrestling with the realities of identity,” American Realness was founded in 2010 by Thomas Benjamin Snapp Pryor and Abrons Arts Center in 2010, directly modeled after the Public Theater’s Under the Radar festival; the eighth annual event comprises more than two dozen performances, readings, workshops, discussions, installations, and a party. The fifth annual Prototype festival, which presents cutting-edge opera-theater and music-theater, hosts seven productions, an anniversary party, panel discussions and talkbacks, and the Out of Bounds series of free performances in public spaces. Below are a handful of recommendations for each of the above January festivals.

COIL
Multiple venues
January 3-22
www.ps122.org/coil-2017

January 3, 4-7, 10-15
CVRTAIN, by Yehuda Duenyas, immersive virtual reality experience, 151 Gallery, 132 West 18th St., $10

January 5-8
Custodians of Beauty, by Pavel Zuštiak/Palissimo, dance-theater piece exploring beauty, La MaMa, the Downstairs, 66 East Fourth St., $20

January 7-10
Basketball, by Molly Lieber and Eleanor Smith, dance exploring past shames, Howard Gilman Performance Space, Baryshnikov Arts Center, 450 West 37th St., $20

January 8
Umyuangvigkaq: PS122 Long Table and Durational Sewing Bee, by Emily Johnson/Catalyst, featuring breakfast, “This Is Lenapehoking: Countering Perceived Invisibility,” “Indigenizing the Future: The Continuance of Aesthetic, Invention, Ceremony,” “My Dad Gives Blueberries to Caribou He Hunts: Indigenous Process and Research as Ceremony,” and “Radical Love: Indigenous Artists and Our Allies,” Ace Hotel New York, 20 West 29th St., free with advance RSVP, 11:30 am – 6:00 pm

January 12-14
A Study on Effort, by dancer and choreographer Bobbi Jene Smith in collaboration with violinist Keir GoGwilt, Invisible Dog Art Center, 51 Bergen St., $20

Tania El Khoury’s GARDENS SPEAK give voice back to dead Syrian activists and protesters (photo by Jesse Hunniford)

UNDER THE RADAR
Public Theater and other venues
425 Lafayette St. by Astor Pl.
January 4-15
publictheater.org

January 4, 6, 10
Erin Markey: Boner Killer, words and music by Erin Markey, directed by Ellie Heyman, starring Markey and Emily Bate, Joe’s Pub at the Public Theater, $25

January 6-9
Gardens Speak, interactive sound installation about ten deceased Syrian activists, by Tania El Khoury, NYU Tisch School of the Arts Abe Burrows Theatre, 721 Broadway, $25

January 9
Incoming! They, Themselves and Schmerm, written and performed by Becca Blackwell, directed and developed by Ellie Heyman, the Robert Moss Theater at Playwrights Downtown, 440 Lafayette St., $25, 5:00 & 8:30

January 11, 12, 14, 15
Latin Standards, written and performed by Marga Gomez, directed by David Schwizer, Martinson Hall, the Public Theater, $25

January 12-15
Time of Women by Belarus Free Theatre, about a trio of women (Maryia Sazonava as Iryna Khalip, Maryna Yurevich as Natalya Radina, Yana Rusakevich as Nasta Palazhanka) fighting for a free and democratic Belarus, written by Nicolai Khalezin and Natiala Kaliada and directed by Khalezin, NYU Tisch School of the Arts Shop Theatre, 721 Broadway, $25

NYC Winter Jazzfest will celebrate one hundredth birthday of Thelonius Monk (photo by William P. Gottlieb)

NYC WINTER JAZZFEST
Multiple venues
January 5-10
www.winterjazzfest.com

January 6, 7
NYC Winter Jazzfest Marathon, multiple venues, $45-$55 per day, $80-$90 for both

Sunday, January 8
Thelonious Monk Makes a Hundred, panel discussion, the New School, Fifth Floor Theater, 55 West Thirteenth St., 3:00

Thelonius Monk 100th Birthday Improv Show, with Kris Davis, David Virelles, Shabaka Hutchings, Sam Newsome, Marc Ribot, Charlie Burnham, Erik Friedlander, Linda Oh, Trevor Dunn, Hamid Drake, Andrew Cyrille, and Deva Mahal playing Solo Monk, Littlefield, 622 Degraw St., $20-$25, 8:00

Tuesday, January 10
Charlie Haden’s Liberation Music Orchestra: A Concert for Social Justice, with special guest Geri Allen and arrangements by Carla Bley, Le Poisson Rouge, 158 Bleecker St., $30-$40, Social and Environmental Justice panel at 6:00, show at 8:00

Meg Stuart will present an evening of solo works at Abrons Arts Center as part of American Realness festival (photo by Giannina Urmeneta Ottiker)

Meg Stuart will present an evening of solo works as part of American Realness festival (photo by Giannina Urmeneta Ottiker)

AMERICAN REALNESS
Abrons Arts Center and other venues
466 Grand St. at Pitt St.
January 5-12
americanrealness.com

January 5-7
An Evening of Solo Works by Meg Stuart, including XXX for Arlene and Colleagues and Signs of Affection, Abrons Arts Center, Playhouse, $20

January 6, 7
Étroits sont les Vaisseaux, by Kimberly Bartosik / daela, duet for Joanna Kotze and Lance Gries, inspired by Anselm Kiefer’s large-scale sculpture, Gibney Dance, Agnes Varis Performing Arts Center, 280 Broadway, $15

January 6, 7, 10
Twenty Looks or Paris Is Burning at the Judson Church (s), solo by Trajan Harrell, first work in series, Abrons Arts Center, Playhouse, $20

January 7, 8, 9, 10
Adult Documentary by Juliana F. May, piece for five dancers about trauma and form, Abrons Arts Center, Experimental Theater, $20

January 8
In the Works: Dance in Process Resident Artists & Guests, with performances by Melinda Ring, Anna Sperber, Michelle Boulé, Jaamil Olawale Kosoko, Larissa Velez-Jackson, Gibney Dance Company, Antonio Ramos, Katie Workum, Bjorn Safsten, Yanira Castro, iele paloumpis, Gibney Dance Choreographic Center, 890 Broadway, free, 10:00 am – 4:00 pm

FUNERAL DOOM SPIRITUAL will have its New York premiere at National Sawdust as part of Prototype festival (photo by M. Lamar)

PROTOTYPE
Multiple venues
January 5-15, $25 unless otherwise noted
www.prototypefestival.org

January 5
Out of Bounds: Amirtha Kidambi, inspired by Nina Simone’s performance at the Harlem Cultural Festival in 1969, 60 Wall St. Atrium, free, 1:00

January 5-14
Mata Hari, composed by Matt Marks, directed and with libretto by Paul Peers, conducted by David Bloom, and starring Tina Mitchell, HERE, 145 Sixth Ave., $30

January 6
Out of Bounds: Leah Coloff, inspired by Patti Smith’s Kimberly and a set at CBGB’s, 60 Wall St. Atrium, free, 1:30

January 6, 7, 9
Breaking the Waves, New York City premiere of opera based on Lars Von Trier film, composed by Missy Mazzoli, directed by James Darrah, conducted by Julian Wachner, with libretto by Royce Vavrek, and starring Bess McNeill and Jan Nyman, NYU Skirball Center, 566 LaGuardia Pl., $30-$75, 7:30

January 13, 14
Funeral Doom Spiritual, multimedia concert by composers M. Lamar and Hunter Hunt-Hendrix and librettists Lamar and Tucker Culbertson, with Lamar on piano and vocals, string arrangements by Hunt-Hendrix, and additional arrangements by James Ilgenfritz & the Anagram Strings, National Sawdust, 80 North Sixth St., $30, 7:00 & 10:00

OTHELLO

Iago (Daniel Craig) makes his case to Othello (David Oyelowo) in gripping NYTW production (photo by Chad Batka)

New York Theatre Workshop
79 East Fourth St. between Second & Third Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through January 18, $129
Thursday, January 12 benefit, $1,500 – $2,500
www.nytw.org

“Were I the Moor I would not be Iago. In following him, I follow but myself. Heaven is my judge, not I for love and duty,” Iago (Daniel Craig) says in the first scene of William Shakespeare’s Othello. “I am not what I am.” What he is is a villain, one of the most devious in the Bard’s canon, and in Sam Gold’s captivating, intense production at New York Theatre Workshop, the audience is also Iago’s judge. Set designer Andrew Lieberman has transformed NYTW into a plywood-encased military barracks where the audience sits on benches on three sides of the action, the main sections holding rows of twelve people, like courtroom juries. The soliloquies are delivered as if closing statements in a trial, the characters trying to convince the audience of their innocence — or guilt. Reminiscent of Nicholas Hytner’s 2013 National Theatre production set in a contemporary military base (among other locations), NYTW’s version is sparer, the long, narrow stage area featuring mattresses and lights on the floor. Iago, ensign to military hero and Moor Othello (David Oyelowo), is determined to exact revenge on Othello for an unproved slight by sabotaging his marriage to Desdemona (Rachel Brosnahan), the daughter of Venetian senator Brabantio (Glenn Fitzgerald). With the help of his naïve friend Roderigo (Matthew Maher), Iago concocts a plan to drive Othello mad with jealousy, trying to convince him that Desdemona is in love with Michael Cassio (Finn Wittrock), Othello’s dedicated captain. “Thou art sure of me. I have told thee often, and I retell thee again and again, I hate the Moor,” Iago says to Roderigo. “My cause is hearted; thine hath no less reason. If thou canst cuckold him, thou dost thyself a pleasure, me a sport,” he adds, explaining how he will get even with Othello, believing that the Moor might have bedded his wife, Emilia (Marsha Stephanie Blake). After Roderigo exits, Iago states his case to the audience-jury: “And it is thought abroad that ’twixt my sheets ’has done my office. I know not if ’t be true, but I, for mere suspicion in that kind, will do as if for surety. He holds me well. The better shall my purpose work on him.” As Othello falls for the ruse, tragedy awaits.

New York Theatre Workshop is transformed into military barracks in Sam Gold’s OTHELLO (photo by Chad Batka)

Royal Shakespeare Company veteran Oyelowo (Volpone, Prometheus Bound) and Craig (A Steady Rain, Casino Royale) make a formidable duo as Othello and Iago, roles previously played by such pairs as Paul Robeson and José Ferrer, Richard Burton and John Neville (alternating parts), Laurence Olivier and Frank Finlay, Chiwetel Ejiofor and Ewan McGregor, and Laurence Fishburne and Kenneth Branagh. Craig is tough and determined as Iago, dead-set on succeeding in his evil goal, while Oyelowo combines an engaging ardor with a heartbreaking vulnerability. Emmy nominee Brosnahan (The Big Knife, House of Cards) plays Desdemona with a strong independence, Blake (Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, Hurt Village) brings depth to Emilia, and Wittrock (Death of a Salesman, American Horror Story) is firm and solid as the loyal Cassio. Through much of the play, other soldiers (Blake DeLong, Anthony Michael Lopez, Kyle Vincent Terry, Slate Holmgren) roam the stage, carrying machine guns, as if violence can explode at any moment, always on the verge of war, keeping things tense as well as frighteningly contemporary, given the state of the world today. Tony winner Gold (Fun Home, The Flick) keeps the racial aspect of Othello simmering just below the surface, ever-present but not overwhelming, casting a black Othello and Emilia and a white Iago and Desdemona among the multiracial cast. (Surprisingly, for most of the twentieth century, Othello was played by white men in major productions, sometimes in blackface.) Gold occasionally breaks the tension with drinking songs led by DeLong on guitar, the characters declaring at one point, “We are, we are, we are, we are the Engineers. / We can, we can, we can demolish forty beers. / Drink up, drink up, drink up and come along with us / ’Cause we don’t give a damn about any old man who don’t give a damn about us.” They’re odd but necessary sidebars in this powerful and intimate three-hour show that grabs you and never lets you go.

THE BABYLON LINE

Teacher Aaron Port (Josh Radnor) and student Joan Dellamond (Elizabeth Reaser) get on board THE BABYLON LINE at Lincoln Center

Lincoln Center Theater at the Mitzi E. Newhouse
150 West 65th St. between Broadway & Amsterdam Ave.
Tuesday – Saturday through January 22, $87
212-362-7600
www.lct.org

The first words of Richard Greenberg’s latest play, The Babylon Line, are “The End,” referencing both the end of life and what might be the end of the literary dreams of Aaron Port (Josh Radnor), who then quotes Walter Benjamin: “Death sanctions all stories.” Unfortunately, the end of The Babylon Line can’t come quite soon enough. It’s 1967, and the thirty-eight-year-old Aaron, who has had one short story published, has been reduced to teaching an adult education Creative Writing class in Levittown for a trio of yentas who were disappointed that Contemporary Events and Politics, Flower Arranging, and French Cooking were already full, plus a drug-addled former valedictorian, a shell-shocked Korean War veteran, and a woman who apparently has stepped right out of a Tennessee Williams play. A reverse commuter who lives in Greenwich Village, Aaron takes the train from Penn Station to Wantagh for the class, managing to net fifteen bucks a week. At first he has little interest in teaching or in his odd students until southern belle Joan Dellamond (Elizabeth Reaser), who like him feels like an outsider, awakens a long-subdued passion in him. While Jack Hassenpflug (Frank Wood) keeps reworking his brief war memory and Marc Adams (Michael Oberholtzer) can’t say much more than hello, Frieda Cohen (Randy Graff), Midge Braverman (Julie Halston), and Anna Cantor (Maddie Corman as a character who has previously appeared in Greenberg’s Everett Beekin and Our Mother’s Brief Affair) gossip about the other students and Mr. Levitt, the founder of Levittown, forming a kind of Hadassah chorus. “I’m very excited about your potential,” Aaron hesitatingly tells the class, but not only doesn’t he mean it, he’s also sarcastically referring to his own potential, which he sees fading away fast. As Joan later remarks, “Levittown is not where people generally come seeking opportunities.”

Aaron (Josh Radnor) faces his creative writing class, and himself, in new Richard Greenberg play

Just as Aaron is bored with what his life has become, it’s hard to get excited about The Babylon Line. The format, framed by the memories of eighty-six-year-old Aaron examining a major part of his life nearly half a century earlier, plays out more like a short story than a fully realized theatrical work; it has some intriguing elements and a handful of fine moments, but it can’t sustain its 140-minute length (with intermission). Coincidentally, Greenberg (Take Me Out, The Assembled Parties), who was raised in East Meadow, has recently released Rules for Others to Live By: Comments and Self-Contradictions, a book that consists of fifty short stories, most of which run fewer than ten pages. Awkwardly directed by Terry Kinney (One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest, reasons to be pretty) on Richard Hoover’s basic schoolroom set, the play also never quite captures the Long Island feel of the title; while there are references to suburbia, it lacks the rhythm of that oft-heard poem: “Rockville Centre, Baldwin, Freeport, Merrick, Bellmore, Wantagh, Seaford, Massapequa, Massapequa Park, Amityville, Copiague, Lindenhurst, and Babylon.” Originally produced by New York Stage and Film in 2014 and running at Lincoln Center Theater’s Mitzi E. Newhouse, The Babylon Line is one class, or train, you won’t mind missing.

RIDE THE CYCLONE

Six recently deceased characters battle over a possible return to life in RIDE THE CYCLONE (photo by Joan Marcus)

MCC Theater at the Lucille Lortel Theatre
121 Christopher St. between Bleecker & Hudson Sts.
Tuesday – Sunday through December 29, $69-$125
212-352-3101
www.mcctheater.org

When I first heard that the new musical Ride the Cyclone was coming to New York City, I could not have been more excited. I’ve been riding the 1927 Coney Island landmark for decades and still make sure to go at least once every summer. But as I sat in the Lucille Lortel Theater one recent Saturday afternoon, it quickly became apparent that this show has nothing to do with the Brooklyn seaside wooden roller coaster that Charles Lindbergh claimed was more thrilling than flying across the Atlantic. However, I very shortly found myself fully immersed in this MCC production — only the third musical in the company’s thirty-year history — about five members of the Saint Cassian High School Chamber Choir from Uranium, Saskatchewan, who are killed in a tragic accident while riding a roller coaster known as the Cyclone at an unnamed Canadian amusement park. Caught up in a kind of purgatorial way station, Ocean (Tiffany Tatreau), Noel (Kholby Wardell), Constance (Lillian Castillo), Misha (Gus Halper), and Ricky (Spring Awakening’s Alex Wyse, the only cast member not part of the original Chicago Shakespeare Theater production) are not sure what happened to them, but they are assured by mechanical fortune-teller Karnak (Karl Hamilton) that they are indeed dead, and that because he did not warn them of the impending danger, he will offer one of them the chance to return to life. They are joined by Jane Doe (Emily Rohm), a creepy, ghostly girl who is more like her doll than a human; meanwhile, Karnak is counting down the hours of his own existence, as a rather large rat is gnawing through his electrical wiring. Each of the youngsters get their moment to shine, performing a solo that reveals their problems along with their hopes and dreams, dealing with such teen angst as homosexuality, overcoming physical disabilities, being a compulsive overachiever, shame, and finding one’s place in the world, each song delivered in a different genre, from glam rock to hip-hop to sentimental balladry. The cast might sing, “It’s just a ride,” but it’s so much more than that.

The Saint Cassian High School Chamber Choir look to the light in MCC production at the Lucille Lortel (photo by Joan Marcus)

The show has been around since 2008, when it was a cabaret song cycle inspired by mass shooting deaths, including the murder of show cocreator Jacob Richmond’s sister, Rachel, while she was trying to protect a teenager outside a Vancouver club; it is now a multimedia extravaganza, with Scott Davis’s haunted, abandoned amusement park set, Theresa Ham’s spot-on appropriate costumes, Mike Tutaj’s intimate, tongue-in-cheek projections, Greg Hofmann’s blazing lighting, and Garth Helm’s all-pervasive sound. Director and choreographer Rachel Rockwell never lets things slow down, as if the audience is riding a psychological roller coaster, while Brooke Maxwell and Richmond’s book, music, and lyrics cleverly play with genre clichés, avoiding turning the plot into The Breakfast Club while beautifully defining each character with such numbers as “This Song Is Awesome,” “What the World Needs Is People Like Me,” “Space Age Bachelor Man,” and “Take a Look Around.” The energetic cast is a delight, each actor glorying in their spotlight, but additional kudos go to Rohm, whose operatic voice soars throughout the theater. (The musical supervision is by Doug Peck, with musical direction by Remy Kurs.) MCC has extended Ride the Cyclone through December 29, but Richmond is considering keeping it going, perhaps transferring to another theater. As Ocean sings, “I know this dream of life is never-ending / It goes around and round and round again.” It might not be about the Coney Island Cyclone, but this ride is still one well worth taking.