The News Herald (Willoughby, OH)
Blank Canvas’ ‘Floyd Collins’ is stuck between a rock and a hard place
Music, acting make Cleveland production worthwhile, but production values are lacking
There’s something truly beautiful in Adam Guettel’s and Tina Landau’s “Floyd Collins,” an odd but appealing musical set in the mid1920s about the real-life misadventure of a young Kentuckian who finds himself trapped in the cave he was hoping to turn into a tourist attraction.
Though the story, the staging and the characters are small — just Floyd Collins in a cave and a bunch of rural-poor townsfolk in central Kentucky trying to get Floyd out amidst a growing media circus — the music, which won the 1996 Obie Award for best score in the Off-Broadway production, is epic.
Like the music Guettel would later write for “Light in the Piazza,” which won the 2005 Tony Award for best score, this work breaks dramatically from the Broadway-tune tradition. It offers unexpected and complex harmonic and discordant shifts and extended melodic structures, and it is often operatic despite its bluegrass roots.
“The Call,” a song in which the subterranean Floyd engages in harmonic yodeling with his own echo, is an astounding example of this.
And while the banjo and melodica are prominent and required instruments for bluegrass-infused music, “Floyd Collins” is more heavily orchestrated than most musicals, which gives weight and power to the moving lyrics. This can be heard in “Daybreak,” a gorgeous song sung by Floyd and Homer, who by this point have tunneled through limestone and sand to offer his brother comfort.
But like the title character, the beauty in this musical lies buried deep within the bedrock. And like the well-intended townsfolk of Barren County, Blank Canvas’ production digs deep but does not quite break through.
It certainly isn’t because this production lacks musicianship.
The entire Collins clan — Floyd (Michael Snider), brother Homer (Michael Knobloch), sister Nellie (Madeline Krucek), father Lee (Rob Albrecht) and stepmother Jane (Amiee Collier) — is played by gifted actors and singers built to do everything the composer asks of them. Snider’s and Krucek’s Appalachian phrasing, rhythms and vocal quality are particularly impressive.
The featured players are well supported by a sevenpiece band (Zachariah Davison on banjo and Clare Panek on melodica), under Matthew Dolan’s direction, as well as a very strong ensemble. The ensemble is so strong it turns expositionheavy company numbers such as “The Ballad of Floyd Collins” into highlights.
Musically speaking, this may be one of the best productions staged by Blank Canvas.
If only this could have been a concert-version of this musical, for the production values that surround these performers cause a slow but steady landslide that buries their fine performances. And fingers must be pointed at Patrick Ciamacco, whose direction is superb but his scenic, lighting, sound and projection designs are not.
Collectively, the show’s design makes it hard to envision the two worlds of this play — the subterranean tomb and the surface circus — and the tension that exists between them. Nor does it create any stylized form of storytelling that explains why the rock formations all have right angles (which don’t exist in nature) or accommodates the play’s more creative moments when Floyd’s dementia allows him to leave his tomb to reminisce with his brother during “The Riddle Song” or say his goodbyes to loved ones during “The Dream” number.
Separately, on the evening of my attendance, lighting meant to create mood during musical numbers killed it with its abruptness and clumsy execution, and poor sound mixing had the band and performers fighting for supremacy. The lyrics in hilarious Act 2 opener “Is That Remarkable,” sung by rabid reporters (Robert Pierce, Brian O. Jackson and David L. Munnell) covering the tragic event, were largely illegible.
The projected images of historical photographs on both sides of the stage help establish a sense of time and place that the basic set design cannot. But the photographs of the actual Collins Clan, novice reporter Skeets Miller (played wonderfully by Pat Miller) and others only serve to remind us that these players are not them, even though Luke Scattergood’s costuming is spot-on.
There are reasons why this musical is a rarely performed, not the least of which is the music is hard and the staging requirements are harder.
While there was no saving poor Floyd Collins, the voices in this Blank Canvas production certainly salvage this staging of “Floyd Collins.”