Casting is complete for Arena Stage at the Mead Center for American Theater's D.C. premiere of the musical Ride the Cyclone, which will play the Kreeger Theater January 13–February 19, 2023, with an official opening January 19.
McCarter Theatre Center Artistic Director Sarah Rasmussen, who helmed the spring 2022 production at New Jersey's McCarter, will again direct.
The cast will feature Ashlyn Maddox (New York City Center’s Parade), Nick Martinez (Kennedy Center’s The Who’s Tommy), Eli Mayer (The Muny’s Footloose), Matthew Boyd Snyder (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory national tour), Gabrielle Dominique (Jungle Theater’s Ride the Cyclone), Marc Geller (Hanover Theatre’s A Christmas Carol), Shinah Hey (Guthrie’s The Music Man), Ashley D. Nguyen (Olney Theatre’s Dance Nation), and Wood Van Meter (Shakespeare Theatre’s Kiss Me, Kate).
Jacob Richmond and Brooke Maxwell's musical, which made its world premiere in 2008 in Victoria, British Columbia, follows six teen chamber choir singers whose lives are cut short in a freak roller coaster accident. Stuck in the afterlife, a mechanical fortuneteller gives them a chance to sing their way back to earth.
“Ride the Cyclone feels really relevant in this time,” says director Rasmussen. “At its heart it asks: ‘When life goes off the rails, what really matters?’ The last few years have been very difficult, and our collective grief and loss is real. I hope this project honors our own agency in also seeing the good around us, what we might be grateful for, and how that might shift how we see ourselves and each other.”
The creative team also includes music supervisor Mark Christine, music director Nick Wilders, set designer Scott Davis, costume designer Trevor Bowen, lighting designer Jiyoun Chang, sound designer André Pluess, projection designer Katherine Freer, hair, wig, and makeup designer J. Jared Janas, associate director Tiger Brown, casting director Stewart/Whitley, stage manager Rachael Danielle Albert, and assistant stage manager Alison Cotes.
Look back at MCC Theater's 2016 production of Ride the Cyclone below:
