I’ve seen three past productions of Floyd Collins – the original at Playwrights Horizons some 30 years ago, and two more at regionals – and been gripped and moved at every one. The current mounting at Lincoln Center, with a starry cast and original director Tina Landau, left me restless and cold, and I think I know why. It’s the venue.
Some background. Most know the Collins story, if at all, from the fictionalization in Billy Wilder’s 1951 film noir, variously released under the titles Ace in the Hole and The Big Carnival. In 1925, the titular ambitious Kentucky spelunker (Jeremy Jordan in the current revival) believed that the scenic cave he stumbled upon could serve as his ticket to becoming a theme-park entrepreneur. When he found himself immovably trapped under debris deep beneath the farm of neighbor Bee Doyle (Wade McCollum), his dilemma became the site of a “big carnival” for random gawkers, not to mention Tragedy Central for national newshounds eager to jack up suspense over the rescue attempts that would prove futile some 11 days later.
Mining their source (no pun intended) for dramatic interest, writer and co-lyricist Landau, and the young composer-lyricist Adam Guettel, focus their attention on the personal, even existential dimensions of one in Floyd’s predicament: immobile, hallucinating, optimism changing to fear, then dread, then an eerily transcendent acceptance. They also acknowledge others profoundly affected: a “tetched” sister (Lizzy McAlpine) back from the nuthouse with enhanced psychic connections; a brother (Jason Gotay) close as a twin and eager for fame; a hard-as-nails father (Marc Kudisch) and stepmother (Jessica Molaskey) handling him with kid gloves. Each is given a moment or two – and a beautiful anthem or two – to sketch in their hopes and fears in counterpoint to the dismal prospects below.
[Read Michael Sommers’ ★★★★☆ review here.]
Indeed, this revival’s strongest sequence begins as the stage goes pitch black, and Scott Zielinski’s spotlights and side lighting track Floyd’s progress to his fate up, down, across and down again. Jordan’s muscularity is perfectly suited to all that parkour as he delivers the powerful solo “The Call,” the vastness of underground Nature driving him on: “Come on, boy! You kin do it now. / You kin have what you dream on.” But the journey ends with Jordan/Floyd supine on an inclined plane stage right, and as strong and appealing as Jordan is as a performer, he cannot compete with the dimensions of the Beaumont stage behind him.
Floyd Collins is generally produced in intimate spaces and understandably so; there is excruciating drama in the protagonist’s remaining ever in our field of vision, just as he remains ever in the minds of those who love him. Here, as the various Collinses and locals take stage for their bravura turns, it becomes all too easy to forget Floyd, off to the side and underlit. The kinfolk are engaging to the extent we connect them to the trapped son and brother, a connection that’s severely compromised here.
Meanwhile, what’s filling that expansive space are a few Constructivist-style set elements (spare enough that you might wonder whether the tech crew has completed its load-in of the design by the collective known as dots). Barrels and such; some strings of bulbs wanly hanging around. The big media show offers a brief opportunity for banners and fireworks and some fancy dancing staged by Jon Rua, but what has all that hoopla to do with Floyd? He would be suffering and doomed whether or not press jackals were present to exploit the occasion. Since we already know the media can be heartless (no news there), the moments of interjected spectacle add nothing to theme or mood in the face of the situation’s gravity.
When the space is filled with Landau’s excellent cast, there’s plenty to admire. McAlpine’s folk style and Joan Baez-like vibrato are well suited, in this stage debut, to Nellie Collins’ otherworldliness. Gotay and Kudisch are stalwart, Molaskey offers a gentle complement, and McCollum is drolly authentic as a down-home cynic. Sean Allan Krill avoids stock villainy as engineer H.T. Carmichael, whose bravado in taking over the rescue efforts is worn down by events. Taking advantage of a strong character arc is Taylor Trensch as “Skeets” Miller, the intrepid cub reporter who was resourceful (and tiny) enough to burrow his way down to Floyd for interviews, emerging with a Pulitzer Prize for his pains. Miller carefully crafts the process by which the rescue effort transforms a callow youth into a mensch.
Still, there’s all that air, all that Beaumont expanse working against the claustrophobia any Floyd Collins really ought to engender. I ached for kinship with the doomed dreamer in his enforced, solitary imprisonment, the feeling of I-know-him, I-could-be-him. This time around, it was not to be.
Floyd Collins opened April 21, 2025, at the Vivian Beaumont Theater and runs through June 22. Tickets and information: lct.org
