Floyd Collins Review

Darkness abounds at the Boiler Room Theatre in Franklin, where only those most-stooped in their obsession of musical theatre will recall an obscure musical called “Floyd Collins”. The musical ran a disappointing 25 performances Off-Broadway in 1996, bypassed that year for the media’s darling, “Rent”, but not forgotten thanks to a well-produced and well-received cast album. The music and lyrics come from Adam Guettel, of “Light in the Piazza” fame, and grandson of the great Richard Rogers with book and additional lyrics by Tina Landau.

            The musical tells the story of a Kentucky cave explorer named Floyd Collins, who searches for glory in “Sand Cave”, but ends up being trapped for 14 days while family, friends, mining companies, and the National Guard try to dislodge him.

            The music for “Floyd Collins” is, while not flawless, unquestionably intricate, and impossible to fully grasp in one listen. I find it almost inevitable to not compare this musical with the similar “Parade” with music by Jason Robert Brown. Both include critiques of media sensationalism and tragic deaths. While Brown’s score is more accessible to the common ear, Collins is much more rewarding upon frequent listens. The orchestra at the Boiler Room is held onstage thanks to the intimate accommodations of the theatre, and in true Guettel fashion contains a heavy amount of strings. The production begins bravely both musically and dramatically when Floyd enters the Sand Cave and spends the first fifteen minutes of the show singing of “The Call” of the cave. Not that this was necessarily a bad thing. The first part of the song is incredibly catchy, and has well-suited lyrics to match. And the yodeling, I believe it would be called yodeling, but whatever it is, it is fantastic. Guettel even effectively reprises it in another standout ballad, the finale, “How Glory Goes”. While fantastic musically, during “How Glory Goes”, Guettel falls into another Jason Robert Brown trap: He has a great title, concept, and base-line melody, but he circles around it with verses and bridges that take away from the great chorus he has created. Floyd sings the words “How Glory Goes” one time, and it is so beautiful, I can’t help but want more! Maybe that was the goal musically, but I hate it. The rest of the songs were fairly unremarkable, aside from the tuneful, “Lucky” and the tightly harmonized, “Is That Remarkable”.

I do have some problems with the book, thank you for asking. The basis of Floyd Collins, unlike most musicals in the last twenty years is not love, well not romantic love. Lindau seems to understand that she can’t keep the storyline solely based on a man who’s stuck in a cave after the first scene: fantastic. So at the beginning she tries to connect the audience emotionally with the Collins family with forced songs like “Heart An’ Hand”, but then in the second act she abandons this plan, and the book slips into an emotional mess.

Her scenes are disjointed, especially in the second act when she shows the family reaching an emotional climax, and beginning to fall apart, but then she never returns to them, and the musical ends. And then you think to yourself, “That was an incredible waste of time” or maybe, “Who were those people?” or was that just me? Again paralleling with JRB’s Parade, the writers want us to feel this grand emotion, but they don’t do enough to relate us to the characters. I felt the most emotion when Skeets Miller, the reporter who is able to sneak into the cave, and Floyd spoke together in the cave. They share a beautifully open conversation, where Lindau uses her most raw dialogue. Had the relationships in the show been modeled similarly to that one, the whole show would have been more cohesive and clear. For the opening scene, the logical choice in my opinion would be to start the narrative with a scene showing Floyd with his family. But, Lindau foregoes the traditional approach, which in hindsight does allow Floyd’s relationship with his family to develop through flashbacks and memories, but even though it’s an admirable method I’m not sure it captures the full essence of emotion the audience needs to feel the pity for Floyd that the writers are trying to garner.

In conclusion, “Floyd Collins” is an excellent entrance onto the musical field for Adam Guettel, and his music is unlike anything ever attempted on a Broadway stage. His score is performed admirably by the cast and orchestra at the Boiler Room, and it is certainly worth the trip.