Revisiting Ride the Cyclone: Why the TikTok Musical Sensation Became What The World Needed

Contains spoilers for Ride the Cyclone

The St. Cassian Chamber Choir (Tiffany Trateau, Gus Halper, Alex Wyse, Kholby Wardell, Lillian Castillo.) Source

Musical theater is no stranger to exaggeration. An art form built around emphasizing the inherent campiness of human existence, theater has long been a platform for those considered too “flamboyant” for the drab mundanity of everyday life to express their true identities.

Ride the Cyclone, however, prides itself in being an darkly-comedic, artsy, cult musical about the beauty found in normalcy — a theme directly polarizing the tone it initially reflected.

Gaining popularity on TikTok in late 2022 after a clip of the song “The Ballad of Jane Doe” went viral, Ride the Cyclone follows a teenage chamber choir who unexpectedly pass away in a roller coaster disaster. In a Cats-meets-The Breakfast Club-style exploration of each other’s deepest desires, the choir comes to realize that, despite their preconceived assumptions of each other, each and every one of their lives is more intricate and complex than what meets the eye.

At its core, Ride the Cyclone is a beautiful exploration of youth mortality and the question of what defines one’s worth. Is it their achievements, or does the very act of existing already grant one’s life merit?

With a cast packed to the brim with tropes and stereotypes, Ride the Cyclone dissects characters who, in any other situation, would not typically be seen as “interesting.” Any of the choir could, plausibly, be people the average person would pass by on the street. None of them, hold for Jane Doe (a mysterious, decapitated girl with no knowledge of who she was in life, portrayed expertly by Emily Rohm) are truly “special” or “interesting” by typical standards — which is why their musical character dissections are more substantial than what meets the eye.

Like the choir, each and every one of us has an inner world. But has anyone ever felt it necessary to care about the internal workings of passers by?

Every ordinary person of us deserves the empathy that the quirkily-mismatched choir develops for one another at the musical’s conclusion. Ride the Cyclone flanderized the choir’s inner worlds, but in all reality, we all have inner worlds just as beautiful and intricate as theirs. We all harbor traumas, and fantasies, and desires — and we must learn to approach everyone with the knowledge that they have a life as perceivably complex as our own, whether they be the Taco Bell cashier, or the quiet, indifferent boy sitting in the back of the room, or the bubbly girl with easily-exploitable kindness and a heart of gold.

Ride the Cyclone’s exploration of youth mortality ties directly into its themes of empathizing with the everyday human. Whether they live for a day or eternity, everyone’s life has meaning.

Ocean O’Connell Rosenberg (Tiffany Tatreau,) the choir’s resident overachiever, spent her seventeen years on Earth buying into the mindset of “building” a life, rather than “living” one. Her best friend, Constance Blackwood (Lillian Castillo,) on the other hand, comes to the conclusion that her comparatively-underwhelming life was as meaningful as anyone else’s in a powerful, heartfelt monologue about letting go of her emotional baggage and being content with the life she lived.

Constance Blackwood (Lillian Castillo) comes to terms with her mortality in the heartbreakingly-simplistic musical number “Sugar Cloud.” Source

Everybody harbors experiences, whether they be as gargantuan to the overachieving teenage mind as graduating valedictorian and being elected class president, to as seemingly-miniscule and “unimportant” as putting glue on your fingers and chewing it off.

However, these “minuscule,” “unimportant” experiences are what make life worth savoring. Not everyone will be able to make it into the imperceivable, minuscule minority of people that will have their achievements visible to the masses; yet, in spite of that, everyone has the potential to live a fulfilling life.

Constance spends her entire life wishing she was doing more with it, just to end up longing for her mundane, everyday reality as soon as it’s ripped away from her. In fact, the choir’s lives had just as much meaning as the most lucrative person on the planet’s, just because they lived.

“It took a horrible accident for me to realize how goddamn wonderful everything is!”

Despite being a musical about death, Ride the Cyclone celebrates the beauty of everyday life — of the everyday person. It reminds us to view every individual we encounter with the knowledge that they are just as complex as ourselves, and to live our lives knowing that the mere experience of existing on this planet is enough to grant our lives merit.