Charles
Isherwood

November 30, 2016

If your knees go weak at the mere sight of a roller coaster, and you shrink in your seat whenever a Six Flags commercial comes on television, you may want to think twice before snapping up a ticket to “Ride the Cyclone,” a musical comedy about, odd as it seems, a gruesome accident at an amusement park that takes the lives of six teenagers. Doesn’t sound like something worth singing and dancing about, does it? But for all who aren’t coaster-phobes, this delightfully weird and just plain delightful show, which opened on Wednesday at the Lucille Lortel Theater, will provide the kind of thrills we look for in all musical comedies, however outlandish their subject matter: an engaging and varied score, knocked out of the park by a superlative cast, and a supremely witty book.