Floyd Collins Broadway Reviews

*CRITIC'S PICK* 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.

Floyd Collins leaves far too soft an impression. It never really joins its hero in the depths... 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.

Despite some scattered strong elements, it’s hard to totally make sense of Floyd Collins or feel that it really works as a whole... There may be treasure hidden deep in the cave that is Floyd Collins, but it may just be too dark and difficult to fully extract it. 

Although its subject is inherently sad, Floyd Collins depicts the title character and his family with a tenderness that allows the musical to transcend any abiding sense of despair. Floyd’s final solo, ‘How Glory Goes’—one of Mr. Guettel’s most rhapsodic and best-known songs—is performed with a transfixing ardency by Mr. Jordan, and leaves you with a sense of spiritual uplift that, in contrast to similar climaxes in many musicals, feels not manufactured to manipulate the emotions, but absolutely authentic... A seasoned actor giving his finest performance to date, Mr. Jordan provides the musical with an affecting emotional center... This one-of-a-kind musical leaves you not with the chill of the cave but with a warmth that glows.

With Guettel’s often sublime score and lyrics that get at the terror, cynicism and, most of all, undying hope against hope well captured in Landau’s book, Floyd Collins might haunt some of those who see it now just as surely as it haunted so many back in ’96... Still, the score, and the production itself, can, and does, drag at times, particularly near the end, when, maybe with a bit of guilt, some audience members might wish a fast-forward to fate. Not to compare our endurance test to that of poor ol’ Floyd, but still, tighter tale-telling, less musical repetition and more intimate staging could send the estimable Floyd Collins soaring.

Sure, this show is about more than Floyd Collins. It has much to say about how America exploits human and familial tragedy, then and now, but it just cannot work fully without a deep connection taking place between the audience and the main character... In this new design by the team known collectively as dot, you don’t so much see the real hills of Kentucky as a kind of surreal dreamscape that looks cool in an arty kind of way, but still doesn’t truly connect you to Floyd himself... Simply put, the emotional waves that all musicals need to surf in order to fully work just seem here to stop at the surface. We understand the issues, but don’t feel all the feels underground.

The show is one long elegy for a man we have barely met and barely get to know, and who doesn’t seem especially special except as a victim of circumstance.

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... The entire production sits on his shoulders and he keeps it aloft through the final seconds... I’d never seen a production of Floyd Collins before, despite loving the score for almost two decades. This one really gives the term revival the full breadth of its definition. Here’s Floyd Collins, the man, born again in front of our very eyes, thanks to a stunning performance from Jeremy Jordan. And here’s Floyd Collins, the musical, expertly gradated up, but still true to its emotional center.

Whatever its deficiencies, Floyd Collins delivers a mighty central character that musically, if not dramatically, is the male equivalent of Rose in Gypsy. Jordan’s magnificent work here is one for the record books, one of the all-time great musical performances. Don’t miss it... The Broadway debut of Floyd Collins makes a good case for the musical without being a revelation... Landau’s book doesn’t really take off until the second act... Her staging calls out the crass American commercialism by giving us a crass Broadway circus-style production number... It is unfortunate that someone with a fresher take wasn’t engaged for this major revival.

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… Jeremy Jordan at the top of his game, with a rich, penetrating voice that at times feels like it could shatter right through that cavern… He and Taylor Trensch (and that opening sequence) are worth the price of admission.

While Scott Zielinski’s lighting suggests the darkness that enfolds Floyd, it’s visually silly that he is ‘trapped’ in a chair purposed for relaxation... The first act may frustrate with its lagginess and scant urgency, and yet it complements the second act’s tragic turns as Floyd’s ordeal inflames a media circus... 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.

Jordan’s splendid, angelically-pure voice, handsome all-American looks, and still boyish earnestness are perfectly suited to project this character... whose dream to achieve greatness twists into a phenomenon beyond his comprehension or in Floyd’s tragic case, beyond even his line of vision... Floyd Collins is a sorrowful musical drama that is illuminated by often beautiful music reflecting the story’s bluegrass and country & western environs... Although they may ultimately feel the show to be a terribly sad experience, they will not be at all disappointed by the touching performance here from the former star of The Great Gatsby.

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, off to the side and underlit, cannot compete with the dimensions of the Beaumont stage... The moments of interjected spectacle add nothing to theme or mood in the face of the situation’s gravity.

The pleasures of Floyd Collins are many, but they’re often diffuse, like bits of gravel and sandstone that’s been chiseled away… While Jordan remains on stage for most of the show, there are vast stretches when the focus shifts to the ensemble—sometimes to the detriment of achieving narrative momentum… And yet you can see (and hear) the seeds of the talent Guettel would display in shows like A Light in the Piazza... Jeremy Jordan is magnificent in his opening solo, ‘The Call’... Vocally, the real standouts are the two actors playing his siblings—whose determination to save Floyd is far more apparent than our sympathy for the reckless daredevil who’s only sketchily drawn.

Still, Floyd Collins is no feel-good entertainment, a rarity in a spring season that has already given us Boop!, Smash, and Operation Mincemeat. But theatergoers seeking more challenging fare are encouraged to dig into Floyd Collins... The sublime Jeremy Jordan is in top form as the overly optimistic Floyd... While film director Billy Wilder was inspired by the ‘media circus,’ Landau and Guettel are more interested in Floyd’s existential dilemma as he realizes he might die, as well as the ever-fracturing relationships above ground that develop during Floyd’s final days.

Despite their earnestness, Floyd Collins leaves us nobody to root for... For all their expertise and Jeremy Jordan’s moving performance, the sum of the whole can’t capture the palpable fear of a man facing his mortality and those he is destined to leave behind... I can’t imagine a more committed effort to make sense of Guettel’s far-reaching score, which shines a headlamp on Jordan’s exquisite voice... But Collins gets stuck. And so does the audience.

In this magnificent staging, Ms. Landau and her collaborators chillingly underline these darker expressions of ambition and voyeurism, which since “Collins” was first staged have fed developments from reality TV to social media. The stark, vast set by a prolific design collective called dots has the feel of an eerie frontier, positioning Floyd as an inheritor to the pioneering spirit that had long fueled American aspiration while accommodating more fanciful scenes, among them stunning dream sequences.