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An obsessed spelunker ravenous for adventure and fortune gets trapped 150 feet down in a narrow cave, permanently pinning his left foot. What’s a guy to do? How about break into song! Careless choices and limited ability don’t seem like great options to sing about or dance to, now do they? But timely relevant, especially in light of West Virginia’s Sago mine explosion January 2, a blast that killed one miner and spread carbon monoxide that slowly asphyxiated 11 other men 260 feet below ground as they waited to be rescued.
Well, obviously “Floyd Collins” is not your typical Rogers and Hammerstein type musical, though interestingly, Adam Guettel, its lyricist and composer is indeed the grandson of the late Richard Rogers. Nor does it include hummable tunes of a typical 32 bar structure. Instead, Guettel favors working in canon where a melody is imitated by one or more voices, or in rounds. The music here takes a country style and infuses it with the looseness of jazz, where folk and bluegrass intermingle with pop and jazz providing for a gorgeous ambient quality that compliments its rural characters.
Theater Latté Da’s exquisite staging of “Collins,” an area premiere, clips briskly along in a clever execution of looking inside a cave. The Loring Playhouse space is shallow and quite vertically challenged for showing fair amounts of height. So director/SJA parishioner Peter Rothstein and set designer Michael Hoover decided to go for an upright kind of approach. The hole is revealed by upstaged platforms that connect like a tunnel to a raked slide with a ledge where the title character’s foot is lodged. Jennifer DeGolier’s lighting is especially effective in capturing the available light used in a cave setting. The actors are evocatively illuminated, the set wildly imaginative. Set and light design symmetrically compliment each other making for the most of its resources and a visual treat for the audience.
Actor-singer Dieter Bierbrauer, a perfect casting choice for the title role, fully inhabits and claims with natural ease the part of a man who lives out his dreams and aspirations without compromise. His motivations are determined by his zest for discovery. He justifies, “When I’m under, I feel right in my bones.” He inhabits a natural chemistry of familial trust with his younger conflicted brother Homer, a sensational Tenor belting Shaun Nathan Baer, and younger provincial sister Nellie, waifish and compelling Zoey Pappas. Playing country folk with Kentucky accents, the three smartly commit to providing honest integrity in their characters, eschewing caricature portrayals. Floyd’s religiously stalwart parents, by-the-bible father Lee Collins (a grounded William Gilness) moans that his son is “following sink holes when he should be following the word” and pragmatically compassionate Miss Jane (assured Janet Hanson) allows “All of us is a bit touched when you look close. That makes us family.” The crafty two build needed dimension in their performances by getting tender on the surprising ballad “Heart and Hand.”
David Roberts’ villainous engineer H.T. Carmichael, effectively played with fiery bombast, threatens all in his path. The most interesting role, Pulitzer Prize Winning Journalist from the Louisville Courier-Journal Skeets Miller, shows unrelenting compassion and dedication during the 17 day entrapment of Floyd. With a jack and crowbar, Miller’s determined to save Floyd and his imbedded foot. Inept rescue crews caught up in the media frenzy fall to self serving interests. For dramatic urgency, actor Joseph Bohon initially rushes his lines but eventually warms courageously to the role of Floyd’s true protector.
Fame, fortune and celebrity invade the town folk of Barren County, Kentucky. This true story of a cave dweller’s demise established the first all out media frenzy in America. Journalists who will dig to unheard of lows for “that scoop” pair with movie producers who want to capitalize on the exorbitant wealth to be gained from Floyd’s plight. The ensemble rises to the occasion with fitting Marx Brothers style and theatrical panache.
“Is that Remarkable?” and “The Carnival” display effective pandemonium and tightly lush vocal harmony. Rich Hamson’s costumes do truly marvel considering the Latté Da’s restrictive budget for a twelve member cast. The characters’ sharply defined rural details sublimely transform with an alluring decadently white and cream Fitzgerald-like fantasy sequence. Andrew Cook’s remarkable music direction aid a five member combo offering a pastiche of bluegrass, country, pop and Dixieland styles with jazz like feel.
Rothstein handles this difficult and challenging material admirably. Paced to perfection, this veteran director draws the best from his actors, musicians and designers. One caveat about Tina Landau’s book of ‘Floyd” can be made that the unsatisfying denouement falls short of delivering anything to really say about redemption that it reportedly claims. In the final song “How Glory Goes,” our protagonist doesn’t verbalize about regret, his consequences or discover anything truly transpiring about himself. Only the dream sequences conjure up a perfect world before an all too abrupt ending.
One is left to ponder just what would have become of Floyd if he had survived. Ironically, what stands out amidst this media circus that has exploited Floyd's misfortune is that the hero of the play is not a member of Floyd's family or community but actually belongs to the source of this manipulation, the press. It's Skeets Miller, the one with honest integrity and guts who risks his life to save Floyd's. Not because this true blue reporter will win notoriety, Miller proceeds nobly because it's the right thing to do.
SJA parishioner and director Peter Rothstein stages, in Floyd Collins, a work ultimately about being called to act with justice. If you are to walk humbly with God, sometimes risk and sacrifice are what make you humble. Long live Skeets.
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FLOYD COLLINS
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