University of Miami's ambitious "Floyd Collins" probes endlessly challenging conundrums

... just saw Adam Guettel and Tina Landau’s Floyd Collins musical at the University of Miami’s Ring Theater with Larry, Gary, and Roger, and I wanted to jot down my impressions of it…

Resurrecting a critically-acclaimed Off-Broadway production that ran for only 25 performances in New York in 1996 (it had been eclipsed to some extent by the tragic circumstances of Jonathan Larsen’s RENT), the ambitious collaboration by my colleagues and students at UM’s Theatre Arts department thoroughly impressed me. Crisply directed by JV Mercanti, with masterful musical direction of the hybrid bluegrass/Bartok-esque score by NDavid Williams, and stunningly energetic and percussive choreography by Christine Kellogg, the unconventional experimental musical was without doubt one of the more challenging pieces I’ve witnessed in a college setting. The ensemble cast of student actors and orchestra fully embraced performing the difficult score with precision and abandon. With costume design by K. April Soroko, lighting by Bryan Kaschube, and a striking set by student designer Lauren Coghlan, the creative team vividly transported the audience into the world of rural 1920s Kentucky. Although the opening night of the production was hindered by a few technical problems that are inevitable in an endeavor of this scope and likely to be fixed in subsequent performances, the talented ensemble cast and orchestra succeeded in not only telling a moving and entertaining story, but more importantly, in challenging the audience to ponder our current situation vis-à-vis Nature, Technology, and the American system.

On the surface a true story about an entrapped Kentucky cave explorer who dies of hunger and exposure after 16 days underground, for me, Floyd Collins resonated as an extended metaphor about human life on the planet earth in the postmodern era. As in the present, in which we are grappling with the effects of climate change after two centuries of industrial exploitation of the earth’s resources, in the play (based on actual events from 1925), a man’s desire to harness nature for his own material gain backfires. In the wake of Floyd’s broken dreams, a callous and selfish society watches as the earth swallows him whole.

The first solo musical numbers in the play feature Floyd singing and dancing in the cave, daydreaming about what he might be able to accomplish economically with his discovery of this precious natural resource within the earth. In these scenes, the hollow cave becomes a vessel for Floyd’s fantasies. After shimmying through a narrow tunnel, he finds a surprisingly huge expanse of underground space, and imagines how it could be harnessed as a tourist attraction that might yield his rural family great economic prosperity, with, I paraphrase, “…signs on the highway alerting folks to the attraction, a 24-hour concessions stand, and a curio shop.” Floyd’s opening musical numbers emphasize his youthful joy and optimism, as he sings and yodels with delight while exploring the cave further. (His nostalgia for past explorations and connection to the earth is a recurring theme throughout, as he also sings about earlier good times with his brother and sister in later scenes, even as he lies pinned under the rocks.) Like an archetypal prehistoric man, Floyd plans to use the earth’s resources in order to provide for a better life for himself and his family.

The morning after he’s gone missing, trapped in the narrow crawlspace, Floyd’s brother Homer finds him and alerts the townsfolk to his whereabouts. Despite their efforts, they are unable to rescue him, as a wedged rock that has fallen on his leg blocks access.

Floyd’s impending doom is artfully woven into the narrative, yet his pervasive sense of hope often overpowers it and creates suspense. In this way, although I knew his fate before the curtain rose, as a spectator, I found myself hoping that somehow things would turn out differently. While Floyd lies below, an assembly of clueless men above prove themselves ineffectual as their own selfish motivations to become heroes or profit at the expense of this potentially tragic situation obscures their brainstorming. The gruesome passage where they try to remove Floyd from the cavern with a harness and rope tied around his waist evokes a feeling of medieval punishment or torture. (Echoing this feeling, water drops also incessantly fall on his head in the bleak February cold. Yet still, for much of the narrative, Floyd remains optimistic.) The harness scene also showcases the engineer’s and patriarch’s lack of foresight, as no medical preparations are taken even as they are contemplating a potentially dangerous maneuver that might sacrifice Floyd’s leg in the process.

Interestingly, in the conversations he has underground with his would-be rescuers, Floyd reveals his belief that the caves in Kentucky are all united by, as he says, some kind of “system.” This word is emphasized in the dialogue, perhaps because the play’s narrative also reveals to the audience a variety of other human systems that surround and are fueled by the tragic event. For example, the story, initially reported on by local newsman Skeets Miller, becomes syndicated from coast to coast via telegraph and the then new technology of amateur radio. In one scene, Skeets explains to Floyd what the term ‘syndication’ means. National syndication of news items had been in practice since the Civil War era, but for Floyd – a rural entrepreneur/modern caveman – the concept is mind-boggling. When the hometown story explodes into a national phenomenon, Sand Cave becomes a ‘social media site’ of sorts (albeit before there was such a thing) as people from all corners of the country travel to witness the situation. A carnivalesque atmosphere arises that echoes the sense of commercial and corporate mayhem that our current 24-hour news cycle provides with its endless advertising hiding behind a thin veil of repetitive news programming (that is often composed of a higher percentage of speculation and opinion/commentary – “spin” – as opposed to actual “news.”) The entrepreneurs and capitalists exploit the terribly heartbreaking situation. They see the rubber-necking crowd developing around Floyd as an opportunity to sell their wares. Highlighting the vulture-like quality of the news industry and the public whose insatiable hunger it serves, the play provokes numerous questions about our American “system.”

From a dramatic standpoint, Floyd’s fate (of untimely death) likens his family to characters from ancient Greek tragedy. Like them, both Floyd and his father attempt to bargain with the divine, beseeching their god for help that never arrives. Also reminiscent of Greek tragedy, the play emphasizes Floyd’s relationships with his kin, especially his brother and sister, and their collective nostalgia for the carefree days of youth. A particularly beautiful and somewhat homoerotic fantasy scene features the two brothers curled in a tender embrace. The love shared between Floyd and his sister Nellie, whose solos are among the most poignant and affective in the show, stands apart from the dog-eat-dog world above, where men jockey for the most advantageous position.

In his first few days underground, Floyd refuses his destiny. Yet while his father turns an opportunistic buck at his expense, and the engineer proves ignorant about nature’s response to his use of technology, faced with his own death, Floyd comes to accept reality. Floyd’s final song and dance is particularly moving: vivid, truthful, full of wistful pain and the trauma of still-hopeful dreams struggling to shine through the darkness of a broken heart. This naive optimism lingers as a potential balm to quell the helpless realization that technology will never render man stronger than the earth itself. No matter how gorgeous the melodies sung by individual voices, social man’s highest artistic achievements and systems are little more than vaudeville song and dance routines when compared with nature’s magnificently unpredictable atonality.

Other thoughts:

Movie camera – motif of aspiring filmmaker trying to divert Homer, Floyd’s brother, from his rescue efforts by tempting him to fantasize about a film career. She chases him around the set with a camera, and he has to fight against allowing the temptation of fame distract him from the more important and pressing matter at hand.

Use of the clanging sound of the hammer chiseling the rock – evokes sounds from capitalistic industrial society. Reminiscent of STOMP, a performance-art dance/drumming experimental theater piece from the 1990s.

Choreography – creates sense of crowd mayhem with a relatively small cast through bright splashes of energetic movement.

Costumes – characters are dressed in various beige tones in Act II as hope washes out and they become more uniformly conforming to the “system” that sucks life from them.

Lighting – beautiful use of lavender in the cave crawl space around Floyd evokes simultaneous sensations of hope, melancholy, and love. Set off by yellow lights.

Set – artful transformation of space that offered visual levels, potential for movement, and a sense of the higher status of the power of nature over man/technology.