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Friday, March 29, 2002

By Christopher Rawson, Post-Gazette Drama Critic

"Talk about your underground theater!" wrote a Playbill reporter of "Floyd Collins."

	'Floyd Collins' WHERE: Playhouse Conservatory Company (Point Park College students) at Pittsburgh Playhouse, Studio Theatre, 222 Craft Ave., Oakland. WHEN: 8 p.m. Wed.-Sat., 2 p.m. Sun., only April 3-14 and 24-28; NOTE no performance this holiday weekend. TICKETS: $12-$14; 412-621-4445.

The musical qualifies in many ways. The story of a 1925 Kentucky cave explorer trapped deep in the earth, a lot of its action naturally takes place underground. And the Point Park production is fittingly staged in the underground Studio Theater at the Pittsburgh Playhouse.

But "Floyd Collins" is also underground theater of the other kind -- an ambitious musical by important talents which has been staged only erratically, here and there.

Why? It's a powerful, disturbing work -- though also lugubrious and not many people's idea of a fun evening. More opera than musical, its tragedy is the dark sort, fitfully illuminated by grim humor, but without the heroic defiance with which tragedy often cushions despair.

The score and lyrics are by Adam Guettel, who has the best musical genes in the business -- son of composer Mary Rodgers Guettel, grandson of composer giant Richard Rodgers. Guettel's score is distinctive and complex, with only a few concessions to Broadway lightening an intense chamber opera, rich in abstraction and anguished meditation. For students to attempt such a score is unusual; for them to carry it off with ability is admirable.

The book, by Tina Landau, is closely based on the true story. Floyd Collins was a backwoods cave explorer credited with discovering and promoting Crystal Cave, and he was part of the "Cave Wars" between Mammoth (most successful of the cave tourist attractions) and its smaller competitors -- all this in a depressed part of Kentucky where there weren't many other ways for an entrepreneur to turn a buck.

Exploring something called Sand Cave in 1925, alone and ill-equipped, Floyd was trapped underground for 18 days before dying, while rescue attempts were bungled and one of the first modern media circuses roared on overheard, powered by that new medium, radio.

If this sounds familiar, maybe you've been to the Floyd Collins museum on the road to Mammoth Cave. Maybe you saw the recent TV documentary. More likely, you recall the highly fictionalized 1951 Billy Wilder movie, "The Big Carnival," co-starring Kirk Douglas and Jan Sterling. As you'd expect, it's not about the Floyd Collins character (called Leo Minosa) but about Douglas' ruthless reporter who takes control of the rescue operation and strings it out, to capitalize on the publicity. Sterling plays Leo's slutty wife ("I'm not going to pray for him! Praying ruins my nylons!"). No one is sympathetic. A commercial failure, it was the "runt" of his movie litter, Wilder said. A vigorous, documentary-like film, I recall it well from some late-night TV encounter.

"Floyd Collins," though, focuses on Floyd, and there's no Douglas character present. Skeets Miller is a sympathetic reporter who puts himself at risk joining rescue attempts. Carmichael, head of a construction firm supervising the rescue, and Roney, a motion picture director from Chicago, are the closest to villainy, but Landau's book is less interested in the exploitative circus than in tracing shared failure, creeping corruption and, as intensified by Guettel's score, Floyd's own weird spiritual quest.

Floyd is stupid, shrewd and ambitious. As the musical starts, after the introductory "Ballad of Floyd Collins," we accompany him underground. In three songs -- maybe the best part of the show -- he portrays his passion, discovers a huge new cavern and starts back -- only to be trapped. And there he stays, imprisoned mid-set for the rest of the show, set free only in striking fantasy sequences.

That all-Floyd first section is "The Call." Section two is "The Rescue," in which we meet his family and the community. After intermission, the out-of-town sensation-seekers show up for section three, "The Carnival," which includes a jittery satiric sequence for reporters -- comic relief that feels out-of-tone with the rest.

Prime mover is director Scott Wise, who had originally hoped to direct "Floyd Collins" for Marc Masterson at City Theatre, a project shelved when Masterson left to head Actors Theatre of Louisville. There, Masterson included "Floyd Collins" in his first season, but with another director. As a relic of the earlier plan, City's Kellee Van Aken signed on as assistant director.

In the small theater, Daniel Wilson's set provides a labyrinth of beams. Douglas Levine's eight-piece orchestra is jumbled up within it, and through it Floyd crawls to the small acting space in front. The whole is imaginatively lit by Andrew David Ostrowski -- darkly, mostly, but with special effects for the fantasy sequences -- and the (uncredited) sound design includes dripping water and earthy rumbles, which merge with the primal moans of Guettel's music to eerie effect.

The squeamish or claustrophobic should be warned: You will feel sympathetic participation in Floyd's plight. Some may want to know that a strobe light is used briefly.

As Floyd, Marcus Stevens is an enigma, a rough country braggart who mixes stoicism with terror, revealing a soul in turmoil. His "tetched" sister is given sweet obliviousness and spooky insight by Robin Abramson. Scott Pearson plays his slicker brother, Homer, the other side of Floyd's coin. As the would-be rescuer and (through his reporting) inadvertent corrupter, Paul Pakler is Floyd's urban equivalent, caught in a situation he can't escape, either.

The full ensemble of 17 plays many roles. To my ear, the voices are very good, and I'm told that Wise has restored difficulties in the score that were removed for the 1997 cast album. As actors, they only occasionally slip into hillbilly caricature. The costuming helps create the right world.

"Floyd Collins" is too complex musically to understand on one viewing. As it makes clear, only in dying did Floyd achieve the fame he sought -- and a kind of immortality. His body, long displayed in Crystal Cave, was only properly buried in 1989. It may take "Floyd Collins" a while to be fully appreciated, too.