A Brief History of FLOYD COLLINS

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This time, the reader question was: What is the history of Floyd Collins?

In 1925, two things happened that would eventually lead to the musical Floyd Collins, which is currently marking its Broadway bow exactly one century later in 2025.

In rural Kentucky, the 37-year-old ambitious cave explorer Floyd Collins died tragically after becoming trapped while attempting to find and excavate a cave.

In midtown Manhattan, the 22-year-old ambitious composer Richard Rodgers had a successful breakthrough into show business, writing songs for The Garrick Gaieties. 

In 1996, Adam Guettel, grandson of Richard Rodgers, son of Mary Rodgers, and brilliant musical theatre writer in his own right, would see his musical Floyd Collins, about the eponymous character, premiere at Playwrights Horizons off-Broadway. Guettel wrote music and lyrics for the show about the unlikely topic, with book by Tina Landau, who also directed both the original production in 1996 and this Broadway premiere in 2025. The two first began collaborating at Yale University in the 1980s.

It’s not out of the ordinary these days for worthwhile musicals that originally premiered off-Broadway and then entered the canon to receive their Broadway debuts decades later. Floyd Collins shares this journey with shows including Assassins, Gutenberg! The Musical!, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, The Last 5 Years, Little Shop of Horrors, and Violet.

Guettel, born into musical theatre royalty, can count Floyd Collins as his first major New York City production; he was 31 years old. The show ran for 25 performances in its original 1996 production. Landau and Guettel had started working to turn the story into a musical several years earlier when Landau discovered an article called “Dark Carnival” about the tragic tale of Collins. Landau and Guettel originally titled their musical Deathwatch Carnival and in an early workshop in New York, Guettel himself played Homer, Floyd’s brother. When the show received its world premiere production in 1994, it was in Philadelphia at the Plays and Players Theatre, presented by the American Music Theater Festival.

The original Playwrights Horizons production of Floyd Collins featured Christopher Innvar in the title role with Jason Danieley as Homer and Martin Moran as Skeets Miller. Brian D’Arcy James was in the ensemble. Music direction was by Ted Sperling who became an integral collaborator on the show with Guettel and Landau, and is also music directing and conducting this 2025 revival. Bruce Coughlin became a vital contributor to the show both times as well, orchestrating for seven musicians in 1996 and now for twelve musicians in 2025.

Since starting to make a name for himself with Floyd Collins, Guettel has been represented off-Broadway with Saturn Returns (1998, recorded as Myths and Hymns) and on Broadway with The Light in the Piazza (2005) which won him the Best Original Score Tony Award and Days of Wine and Roses (2024). His new musical Millions, based on the film, is currently premiering at the Alliance Theatre in Atlanta. Saturn Returns, recorded and now licensed as Myths and Hymns, is a song cycle based on Greek myths. The musical styles showcased are eclectic and the material is of a grand scale. The Light in the Piazza, which marked Guettel’s Broadway debut as a writer, is based on a 1960 novella about a young woman and her mother who travel to Italy. The idea to adapt The Light in the Piazza was originally Mary Rodgers’; she suggested it to her father and then later to her son. Days of Wine and Roses depicts a couple in the 1950s struggling with alcoholism; the original Broadway production starred Kelli O’Hara who had previously originated the daughter role in Piazza and Brian d’Arcy James from that original Floyd Collins ensemble. Millions is a different style of musical for Guettel; the show is a family-friendly piece about a bereaved family whose mother has just died and the money-related trouble they get into. 

Tina Landau made her Broadway debut as a director 5 years after Floyd Collins premiered off-Broadway with the first Broadway revival of Bells are Ringing (2001). Since then, she has directed and sometimes conceived multiple plays and musicals on Broadway including this season’s Redwood, which she directed, co-conceived with its star Idina Menzel, and co-wrote book and lyrics with composer Kate Diaz. One of Landau’s most major Broadway projects was SpongeBob SquarePants, which she directed and conceived in 2017. 

The true story of cave explorer Floyd Collins is certainly an unlikely topic for a musical, and in bringing this to the stage, Guettel was carrying on his grandfather Richard Rodgers’ legacy. With Oscar Hammerstein, Rodgers revolutionized the art form of musical theatre, including what musicals could be about. Rodgers and Hammerstein’s first joint foray on Broadway, after years of collaborating with others, was Oklahoma! While we now know the 1943 musical to be a canonical, game-changing work, at the time, the show that opened with an older woman churning butter rather than a chorus line of attractive young women was considered destined-to-be-a-flop by the industry. (The famous quote about its out-of-town tryout was “No legs, no jokes, no chance!”) Oklahoma! and then Carousel, The King and I, and the rest of the Rodgers and Hammerstein works transformed musical theatre, leading to more integrated shows about more challenging and improbable topics. When Guettel’s Floyd Collins took the stage in 1996, he was honoring this legacy that started with his grandfather. 

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