Find out how critics are reacting to the Broadway premiere based on the true story of a cave explorer who was trapped underground in Kentucky in 1925.
Deadline.com: “Guettel’s music, by and large, isn’t always easy on first listen. It is dreamy and unconventional – lacking melody is usually the first complaint – but here the score is infused with elements of country, blues and mountain music, giving it a homier feel. Bruce Coughlin’s orchestrations are superb.”
Exeunt NYC: “It’s not the kind of role Jeremy Jordan usually takes on, but as the two and half hours of the musical elapse, it’s clear that he was born to play it. Like most of Guettel’s music, it’s a hell of a sing, requiring power and stamina and a soaring range. Even though Floyd spends most of the musical stationary, it requires a palpable presence.”
New York Post: “Guettel’s sumptuous early work, although lyrically too “there’s gold in them, thar hills,” is enough of a reason to see the rarely performed show.”
New York Stage Review: “Landau’s authoritative production is doubly supported through deeply sincere performances by Jason Gotay as Homer, Floyd’s loving brother who shares his happy dreams and memories, and by Taylor Trensch as a skinny cub reporter who desperately struggles to rescue him. Marc Kudisch simmers as Floyd’s volatile dad who frays into madness. Lizzy McAlpine gives a sweet, plaintive musicality and a poignant presence to the role of Floyd’s troubled sister. Sean Allan Krill depicts an officious interloper with square-jawed confidence. Wade McCollum, Clyde Voce and Cole Vaughan capably vocalize and vividly depict local not-so-good-ole-boys. (The gifted McCollum of Ernest Shackleton Loves Me repute understudies the title figure; somebody let me know whenever he plays Floyd.)”
New York Theatre Guide: “Comedic quips keep the musical from sinking into bleakness, and Guettel’s folksy bluegrass score, complete with yodeling, is a remarkable one. The yodeling is its own indecipherable language, and it’s also the sound of Floyd’s communion with the very forces of nature that lured and then trapped him.”
The New York Times: “Still, Floyd Collins reaches the sublime, and that is a rare achievement in any work of art… One of the wonders of the show’s glorious-sounding new production… is how far from claustrophobic it feels… Jordan swiftly makes us want that for Floyd… Suddenly, powerfully, Floyd was all of us, waylaid mid-pursuit of happiness, uncertain how to proceed… Inside that tiny, frightening pocket of earth, Floyd needs an echo. To cry out and get only silence back: There would be heartbreak.”
Vulture.com: “For a show with such a potentially powerful symbol at its core — a man trapped in the rock, singing as he’s crushed by America — the production feels like it’s skimming the surface. Visually beautiful at times, but the horror of Floyd’s situation is never truly realized, and the people above ground feel more like concepts than characters. I felt more fear reading a sketch of the real entrapment than during the entire two-plus hours of the musical.”
Variety: “Despite some scattered strong elements, it’s hard to totally make sense of “Floyd Collins” or feel that it really works as a whole. The musical’s prelude, “The Ballad of Floyd Collins,” sets up the musical as a parable, though the moral isn’t ever really defined; the show does not return to this idea in the finale or leave us with a clear takeaway. “
Time Out: “If you’re already a fan of Floyd Collins’s score, you are likely to enjoy this eminently respectable performance of it, and maybe even respond to it emotionally. If not, though—if, like Floyd or like me, you find yourself killing time without being moved—Floyd Collins’s admirable musical ambition may remind you that sometimes when exploring you make thrilling discoveries, and sometimes you just get stuck. “
Theatrely.com: “Floyd Collins is an odd piece which, staged, asks a little too hard that we mine through dense earth to reach its goal. But this Broadway premiere makes a solid case for its beauty, found through a gorgeous score that draws opera from Americana.”
To find out more visit: https://www.lct.org/shows/floyd-collins/