Near the beginning of “Floyd Collins,” a sonically spellbinding musical inspired by a bleak and bizarre true story, Jeremy Jordan as the title character yodels into the darkness – and hears a sonorous echo. That’s how he knows he’s discovered a very deep cave, one that he hopes to turn into a tourist attraction that will make his fortune. It instead turns him into a tourist attraction, when he becomes trapped in a tight crawlway in the cave. This prompts a rescue effort, which is reported in the newspapers and in national radio broadcasts; the publicity draws tourists to the rescue site in the tens of thousands.
The echo that Jordan creates (assisted deftly by sound designer Dan Moses Schreier) startled me, and pleased me. It was the first of the many striking theatrical effects in this thirty-year-old musical by composer Adam Guettel and librettist/ co-lyricist Tina Landau, who is also directing this Broadway debut production at Lincoln Center’s Vivian Beaumont Theater. From the get-go, every sound registers; some soar.
An echo is also a good way to describe the musical as a whole. “Chicago” has been depicting a media circus nightly on Broadway since 1996 (the year “Floyd Collins” had its first, brief run, Off-Broadway, also directed by Landau.) This past season alone, “Dead Outlaw” and “Operation Mincemeat” are also inspired by bizarre true stories (about corpses), and both “Swept Away” and “Redwood” also deal with an individual facing the power of nature. The connection between “Floyd Collins” and “Redwood” may be most obvious, since Landau serves as director, librettist and co-lyricist for both of them. But in “Redwood,” nature is the salve and solution, while in “Swept Away,” as in “Floyd Collins,” it’s the antagonist.
“Floyd Collins,” in other words, doesn’t especially stand out in its choice of subject or treatment of themes or for any depth of psychological, cultural or political insights. It’s tempting to call this cave story shallow; I suppose that’s glib. But you would not be alone in wondering why theater artists of such talent reached back to 1925 Kentucky to mint a musical mined from such an inherently frustrating, now century-old historical tragedy.
They did, though, and if you can accept that the main character spends most of two hours not only dying, but stuck in what looks like a chaise longue off to the side of the vast Vivian Beaumont stage, there are tangible pleasures in this production of “Floyd Collins.”
A first-rate cast led by Jordan brings out the beauty in much of Guettel’s score, which offers a tuneful taste of Appalachia interpreted through the expansive palate of this son and grandson of Broadway composers. Although he’s largely immobile, Jordan grabs us from first to last — with such solos as “The Call,” a song before he’s trapped, full of bravado about the fortune that awaits him; “And She’d Have Blue Eyes,” a soft ballad, early on after getting stuck, far more tentative about his future (“After this is over, Lord/Will there be a girl for me?”); and the soaring finale, when he accepts his fate, “How Glory Goes.” But the score doles out the glories.
Jason Gotay shines as Homer Collins, Floyd’s brother, in two playful duets with Jordan reminiscing about their youth (“Daybreak” and “The Riddle Song”) and a fierce solo (“Get Comfortable”) attacking H.T. Carmichael of the Kentucky Rock and Asphalt Company, (Sean Allan Krill), the self-appointed manager of the rescue effort who covers up his incompetence with pomposity.
The other members of the Collins family all get their musical moments – Lizzy McAlpine as his sister Nellie and Jessica Molaskey as his stepmother Miss Jane get a hopeful and gorgeous duet about him (“Lucky”) When things seem increasingly hopeless, Marc Kudisch as Floyd’s irascible father Lee and Miss Jane try to reassure one another in what sounds like a lullaby. (“Heart and Hand.”)
Taylor Trensch is touching as Skeets Miller, the cub reporter from the Louisville Courier-Journal who breaks the story of Floyd’s imprisonment, but also, because of his diminutive size, was able to squeeze his way down through the cave and make contact with Floyd (“I Landed on Him”), feeding him and trying to free him; he comes off, perhaps ironically, as the one would-be rescuer most concerned with Floyd’s well-being and least obsessed with the opportunities that the publicity could afford him. (There is no mention in the musical that Miller’s efforts won him a Pulitzer Prize.)
There are pleasing visual as well as sonic effects. While Jordan only occasionally rises up in fantasy or flashbacks, his entrapment below ground is contrasted to a carnival occurring above him (actually, to his left), complete with barkers and fireworks and a dizzying light show.
Landau arranges her large cast – ten principal performers plus ten ensemble members – in a series of vivid tableaux, silhouetted in front of sunsets or abstract backdrops suggesting dust and despair.
“Floyd Collins” ends with Jeremy Jordan silhouetted against just such a backdrop, arms in the air, as if in surrender or in welcome. But right before that, he repeats what I later learned is called the “cave canon” — the echo that had been so startling. It had now become inexpressibly moving.
Floyd Collins
Lincoln Center’s Vivian Beaumont Theater through June 22
Running time: two and a half hours, including an intermission
Tickets: $58 – $299
Music and lyrics by Adam Guettel, additional lyrics by Tina Landau.
Book by Tina Landau
Directed by Tina Landau
Sets by dots, costumes by Anita Yavich, lighting by Scott Zielinski, sound by Dan Moses Schreier, and projections by Ruey Horng Sun, with dance sequences by Jon Rua, orchestrations by Bruce Coughlin
Cast: Jeremy Jordan as Floyd Collins, Jason Gotay as Homer Collins, Sean Allan Krill as H.T. Carmichael, Marc Kudisch as Lee Collins, Lizzy McAlpine as Nellie Collins, Wade McCollum as Bee Doyle, Jessica Molaskey as Miss Jane, Taylor Trensch as Skeets Miller, Cole Vaughan as Jewell Estes, Clyde Voce as Ed Bishop as well as Kevin Bernard, Dwayne Cooper, Jeremy Davis, Charlie Franklin, Kristen Hahn, Happy McPartlin, Kevyn Morrow, Zak Resnick, Justin Showell, and Colin Trudell.
