‘Floyd Collins’ Review: Adam Guettel’s Best Work Still Lies Ahead

When Stephen Sondheim died, it was the end of a chapter, the farewell to an era, in theatre history. Who, everyone asked, will continue the tradition of the legendary Broadway musical? The gods (and ladies) who wrote the songs that defined decades we all still live by are but a memory now. No more Rodgers and Hart or Rodgers and Hammerstein, Cole Porter or Irving Berlin, George and Ira Gershwin, Lerner and Loewe, Cy Coleman and Dorothy Fields or Carolyn Leigh, or Jerome Kern and anybody. OK, some folks still generously call them valid, but I’m no fan of Andrew Lloyd Webber or Stephen Schwartz. That pretty much leaves us to sing the praises of one fellow alone. And I do mean Richard Rodgers’ grandson, Adam Guettel. 

At 61, he’s still got years of promising new musicals ahead, and I plan to be around to see as many as time and the weather will allow. Wikipedia says he’s written six shows, but I’ve only heard of three. The first was Floyd Collins, which had a brief, disappointing off-Broadway run in 1996, when he was 32 years old. Making a conscious effort to avoid any comparison to both his illustrious grandfather and his witty, talented mother Mary, who wrote Once Upon a Mattress, the show that made Carol Burnett a star, he deliberately eschewed songs with melodies in favor of writing tongue-twisting lyrics nobody could sing, but he attracted serious attention as a musician who was unafraid to tackle the most complex styles. Still, he didn’t hit his stride until Light in the Piazza, a beautiful show that won him the Tony Award and proved he could write poignant, romantic ballads as memorable as any of the great songwriters of the past. His third show, The Days of Wine and Roses, was not a success because audiences could not embrace the depressing subject of self-destructive alcoholism as a musical.

So now, while the world awaits his next project, there’s a curious New York revival of Floyd Collins, his youthful freshman effort, at Lincoln Center. It’s limited engagement until June, and audiences who never saw it the first time around are grabbing tickets like free pralines.

In case you don’t know what it’s about, Floyd Collins is a true story about a farmer’s son in rural Kentucky who, in 1925, fell into an underground cave where his foot was trapped under a rock nobody could move. First responders included his brother, who was able to reach him but unable to free his leg, his adoring sister, who was not allowed in the cave but brought him food to stay alive, and a cub reporter from Louisville who wrote a story about the incident that was syndicated in 1,200 newspapers. After five days in the cave, people came up with theories and plans for saving him, including amputation. In the ensuing songs, questions are explored musically about luck, fate, fear and life after death that grow tedious in record time. A huge cast is in remarkably good voice, including Jeremy Jordan, the charismatic singer who once stopped the Broadway show Bonnie and Clyde, and, most recently, left The Great Gatsby to play Floyd Collins. The move is questionable, in my opinion, because Floyd is not much of a role for an actor strapped to a rock in the dark, unable to move.

Things pick up in the flashbacks, showing Floyd and his younger brother Homer the way they used to swing on ropes and sing riddles as kids. Jason Gotay, who plays Homer, also has an equally powerful voice, so one of the show’s highlights is when the brothers sing together. The inevitable attempts of engineers, journalists, and assorted thrill seekers and ambulance chasers to use Floyd’s tragedy for their own fame parallel, in obvious ways, events in Billy Wilder’s classic film Ace in the Hole, which was also based on the Floyd Collins story. The play converts the events to a much smaller space, of course, but it is amazing how much director Tina Landau conveys, from he claustrophobia of a dark cave to the carnival atmosphere of a media circuit, replete with balloons and clowns and concession stands. I am probably making this lengthy, uneven, often muddled endeavor sound more riveting than it is, but the bottom line is that I find 2 and ½ hours about a man in a cave trapped under a rock 2 and ½ hours too long. 

People who know nothing about Adam Guettel find it all fascinating, but to me, it’s a shame to return to his earliest style, which, in retrospect, seems downright experimental. The talent is there and the applause is deserved, but Guettel has improved so much since Floyd Collins that I find it hard to settle for second best. He’s gone on record dissing anything that smacks of old-fashioned musical comedy grandeur, and is well known as a man with no regard for melody. Not to worry. There isn’t a melody anywhere in Floyd Collins that anyone could sing, hum or remember. 

I guess a long, tedious revival of Floyd Collins will have to suffice for the time being, but hope for a fresh, original new work from the mind and talent of Adam Guettel springs eternal. I’m more interested in what he does next than what he did first.