*Floyd Collins,* April 10, 2025

Karen and I saw *Floyd Collins* at the Vivian Beaumont Theater on Apr 10, 2025. The show was originally produced off Broadway in 1996 and it had (surprisingly) only 24 performances. It's become a sort of cult show in those thirty years - - this is the Broadway premiere.

The show has music and lyrics by Adam Guettel and a book and additional lyrics by Tina Landau. This Broadway production was also directed by Landau. The subject is the true story of Floyd Collins, a Kentucky cave explorer who went into an underground cave, got trapped, and died in 1925. I wonder if this Broadway production is partly meant as a centennial of his death.

A rescue team was able to bring him food and water for the first four days. The cave then suffered a collapse and he was trapped without anyone able to get to him. He lived for ten days and died of thirst and hunger. His story became a national media sensation, according to Wikipedia this was among the first stories to be reported on broadcast radio.

The most thrilling part of the show was the music - - it has folk and country flavors but sounds utterly original. A couple of moments have a flinty modern vibe, like Webern or even Frank Zappa. Most impressive of all, Guettel and Landau thoughtfully mapped out the show in terms of what would be sung and what would be spoken, what dramatic moments were best served as songs, which were best served as dialogue. Often some dialogue would have underscoring and the actor would switch from speaking to singing in the middle of a sentence. These are the marks of a first-class musical team.

The media circus in the second act was staged somewhat like an actual circus which gave me a strong whiff of Weill and Brecht's *Mahagonny,* a reference sure to thrill my heart. Guettel is the son of Mary Rodgers (who wrote *Once Upon a Mattress*) and the grandson of Richard Rodgers. This show sounds nothing like *Carousel,* *South Pacific,* or other Rodgers and Hammerstein shows but it tips is hat to them in the way it tackles deep subjects and moves the form forward in the way it combines music and spoken words to give greater power to both. They also avoided the trap of making the characters cute or folksy. They were rough-hewn, honest, straightforward rural people, similar to some of the people I knew growing up in southeastern Wisconsin.

The theme of money hovers beneath the surface of the story, it's one of the things that brings out the Brechtian element of the show. It's 1925 and the Great Depression feels like it's just over the horizon. The farmers are falling on hard times and trying to strike it rich by finding underground caves and turning them into tourist attractions.

The staging was extraordinary. I knew a little bit about the story going into the show and of course wondered how they'd convey someone being 55 feet underground. Landau's solutions were inventive and pure stage magic. She seems to trust the audience to use their imagination and fill in the blanks. That always feels good, as an audience member.

The cast was first rate. Jeremy Jordan is a rising leading man - - I saw him in the dreadful *Bonnie and Clyde* in 2011 and he more recently played the title character in a musical of *The Great Gatsby.* His performance was strong, confident, touching, and bold. His performance beautifully illustrated the emotional journey of his character. His singing was a special joy, especially the yodeling he did to test the caverns in the cave. That was the most amazing element of the score - - Guettel often had Floyd singing in counterpoint with himself, the echo of one line singing a duet with the live utterance of another line. In one song this sequencing went on for quite a while and was jaw-droppingly effective.

Here's a taste of the yodeling, as featured in a TV commercial I've seen about 5,000 times:

Jason Gotay played Floyd's brother Homer. He's a total dreamboat. I saw him in *Teeth* off Broadway and was excited to see him in this. He's startlingly handsome and has a lovely voice. He and Jordan had strong chemistry as the brothers. Lizzy McAlpine played their sister Nellie - - she doesn't appear to have done much in the theatre, her career has been as a singer/songwriter. She was tremendous, her singing was highly expressive and she knows how to stay still and let the audience come to you.

One of the best roles in the show is the role of Skeets Miller, a young reporter who's among the first on the scene covering the story. He's a small man and volunteers to go in exploring and making contact with Floyd. This leads to him going a little neurotic, along with guilt for having helped create the media circus. This role was played by Taylor Trensch, who I'd seen as Cornelius's wingman in *Hello, Dolly!* His performance in *Floyd Collins* was one of those great moments where you see an actor being given a chance to show you something richer and more multi-faceted than you might have thought they'd be able to tackle. And he nailed it.

Jessica Molaskey played Floyd's stepmother. She only sings in two songs but that seemed like more than enough - - her singing was pretty patchy, she had an on-again/off-again relationship with the pitch. Karen and I both gave her the benefit of the doubt and thought maybe she was trying to sing in a deliberately untrained style but after a few minutes it didn't feel like a choice. Marc Kudisch played Floyd's father. I'd seen him in *Thoroughly Modern Millie,* *A Little Night Music,* *9 to 5,* and probably a few other things. He's a strong appealing baritone and it was a nice change to see him in such a dramatic part, with relatively little singing to do. Like Trensch, he totally rose to the occasion.