Floyd Collins: Adam Guettel Does...Bluegrass?

How physical stagnancy can be emotionally active, and an investigation of what dramatic action really is.

Adam Guettel, the grandson of the great Richard Rodgers, has musical theatre composition in his veins. Known for Light In The Piazza, To Kill A Mockingbird, and now, Days of Wine and Roses, Adam has crafted a legacy of dense orchestrations, complex melodies, and heart-wrenching narratives. This week, I dove into Floyd Collins, a musical that takes place near Cave City, Kentucky (a place I frequented as a kid), and follows protagonist Floyd as he gets trapped in a cave.

I have come across Floyd Collins before in my history of musical theatre course at my university, but nothing I heard really stuck with me. To be honest, I didn’t think that Guettel’s music really scratched an itch for me. While I love “The Beauty Is,” I never added it to my rep book for the primary reason of it being very difficult to sing, and the rest of the score of Piazza, while beautiful, never gripped my attention.

I have been staring at the name Floyd Collins on my Substack “to-listen” list with dread for weeks, worrying that it would be a dull experience in which I have to break down Guettel’s unusual (albeit genius) melodies and find something to say about the plot. And yet, when I turned on “The Ballad of Floyd Collins,” I was so pleasantly surprised.

What followed was an hour of riveting music that brought me back to the tonal landscape of my childhood, mixing traditional bluegrass instruments and colors with classical melodic development. It was unexpected, it was masterful, and it was deeply emotional.

I guess I’m an Adam Guettel fan now. Or at least a Floyd Collins fan.

But before I prattle on about the tunes in the show, let’s talk about what went into making Floyd Collins.

If you don’t know, now you know:

Floyd Collins is based on a true story where Floyd Collins (born in 1887) was one of many individuals in the early 20th century to try to explore the great cave system now known as Mammoth Cave. At this time, people would pay to come and see caves, boosting tourism in the area. Floyd had already discovered the Great Crystal Cave and the Flint Ridge Cave System, but because these caves were small, there weren’t very many tourists. Floyd wanted to discover a larger cave and earn a fortune from people coming from all over to see it.

Collins worked to excavate Sand Cave, but while exploring, a rock fell and trapped him in the cave. The rescue mission to recover Floyd lasted two full weeks, and Floyd was a national news sensation. His epitaph now reads “The Greatest Cave Explorer Ever Known.”

Though cave exploration may not seem like an exciting premise for a musical, I must say that it is exciting to have a musical set in my home state and in a setting that I have visited so many times. I grew up going to Mammoth Cave on weekends, taking boat rides and camping there. I love the rich history of Kentucky, and while I am traveling the state for work this week, it has been special to reminisce on my time growing up here.

As for Guettel and his relationship to Kentucky and Collins — the piece was originally a commission by Philadelphia’s American Musical Theatre Festival in 1994. A Playbill article by Christine Ehren details Guettels writing and development process, saying: “Research led him to Barren County, KY, where Guettel ate an apple with Floyd Collin's niece on the family's porch, studied the Kentucky blue-grass of the 1920s and sat in Collin's discovery, the Crystal Cave, opened specially for him.” Guettel went with the park service to the cave Floyd discovered, and his notes from that visit played a major role in his writing process.

Though Guettel was off to the races on the score, he struggled to find a book writer. He and director Tina Landau micromanaged book writers, trying to describe what they wanted, but eventually decided they would write the book because they already had such a specific vision for what the show needed.

As Landau and Guettel gripped the reigns of the story tightly, Floyd Collins was birthed. The show premiered off-Broadway at Playwright’s Horizons in 1996, where it played for only 25 performances. Yet just like Merrily We Roll Along or Follies, just because this musical was a flop doesn’t mean it wasn’t an artistic success. Floyd Collins is highly revered by many, myself included, and has continued to have a life internationally and regionally.

Now, with our history lesson out of the way, let’s talk about the score.

The breakdown:

Floyd Collins begins with “The Ballad of Floyd Collins,” and out of the gate, Guettel gets bonus points for this yummy guitar that we start with. I’ll say it over and over again, but this score doesn’t just promise us folk or bluegrass music. It elevates the genre, bringing classical composition technique to the genre. It’s magnetic.

Lyrically, I have to admire that the lyric for this opening number is relatively short. It’s only fifteen lines long, but in these fifteen lines, we get everything we need. As Stephen Schwartz says, “A great premise promises conflict,” and the following lines made me immediately invest in the musical, and more specifically, in Floyd:

“Even Floyd knew somethin’ wasn’t right
He was suff’rin’ nightmares at night
but he didn’t worry ‘bout what he dreamed;
Things was goin’ good or so it seemed
Went lookin’ fer his fortune under the ground…
Sure enough his fortune is what he found.”

So haunting! So evocative! The forwarding!

With just these six lines, I am strapped and buckled in. Let’s go for the ride, Guettel.

We plow into a three-part song: “Act I: The Cave, The Call” The first part is “The Call,” in which Floyd explores the caves using the echoes of his voice to guide him. This song is a sort of “I Want” number for Floyd, where we hear that he wants to discover the biggest cave in the area and to make a fortune off of people visiting it.

I love the groove that we get in this song with the strings feeling so sweeping and majestic. If there’s one thing I know about Adam Guettel, it’s that this man can orchestrate.

I also love the call that Floyd uses to explore in this song and how it echoes. I am curious about how the sound design works in the theatre — on the record the sound production makes his call feel like it is actually echoing, but I am curious about if that is mimicked in the space!

We also get a hint of Floyd’s given circumstances, where he talks about wanting to make his father proud and eradicate their money problems. He says, “I ain’t a crazy cabin’ fool, you see!” Floyd dreams about people coming from all across Kentucky to visit his cave, and his melody grows and ascends as his dreams get bigger and bigger.

Thank you Adam Guettel for giving us this cowbell sound. The percussion in this whole song is so evocative. Takes me back to the hills of Kentucky.

I will say, part one is long. It’s 7 minutes. Almost a minute and a half of this is Floyd yodeling in the cave. Somehow, I eat it up.

In part two, “It Moves,” Floyd explores his new discovery, so massive that it is nearly incomprehensible. Though I can praise Guettel’s orchestrations all day long, there are so many lyrical passages of this show that just took my breath away. Take this section for example, when Floyd talks about the cave:

“'T aint wet though, no more than a bone.
Guess it jes' remember when there was ariver goin' through centuries ago,
back when there was dinosaurs an' there was Adam and Eve.
Things happen an' folks forgit, but the rain soaks it up and collects it here;
No tellin' what's on these walls, layerin' on slow like a stone history book,
with a couple of sentences 'bout me.”

This passage is so beautiful because it is Floyd putting himself in the history book written in the stone of these walls. If you’ve ever stood in a cave or gazed at the mountains, there is such a wonderful understanding in knowing that the Earth has been here for so much longer than books or computers or even humans, and that by existing in conjunction with these beauties of the planet, we are a part of a long history. I love how Guettel writes this moment.

The third part of “The Call” is “Time to Go,” a short piece (under 90 seconds) where Floyd begins to imagine turning the cave from a natural beauty into a tourist attraction. The yodel motif returns, and though this passage is short, it’s a nice capstone to this three-part tune.

What is not captured in this song is how Floyd, in trying to exit the cave, gets trapped. Suddenly, we plunge into the next narrative movement of the show, “The Rescue.” The first song in this movement is “Lucky,” where his family sings about Floyd. Nellie, Floyd’s younger sister, speaks about how Floyd is lucky by nature and urges her family not to worry. She sings with Miss Jane (and wow, are these harmonies delicious), who is Floyd’s stepmother. This is a heartwarming number and is a lovely introduction to both of these characters.

Next, we get part two of The Rescue movement, “‘Tween a Rock An’ A Hard Place,” sung by fellow cavers who entertain each other with tales of close calls they have had. All of these people believe Floyd will be quickly rescued; Guettel succeeds here in not writing the end of the show at the beginning. He delivers hope and party before pain and loss.

In “Daybreak,” Guettel starts to tell the audience that this rescue mission will be complicated as Floyd’s brother, Homer, goes into the cave to spend the night with Floyd. Homer comforts Floyd with memories of their childhood. Track 7 is the perfect place for Guettel to deliver us our first heartwarming ballad. I feel like sibling relationships can sometimes get overlooked in the theatrical canon, and his brotherly relationship really pulled at my heartstrings. What a perfect duet.

The ending line, “That’s right. You rest now. Your baby brother’s gonna get you through the night,” nearly destroyed me. It’s only track 7! How am I supposed to make it to the end?

Our empathy-inducing ballads are short-lived, though, as we plunge into the chaotic, “I Landed on Him,” sung by Louisville Courier-Journal (hometown shoutout) reporter William Miller. Miller visited Floyd in the caves a total of eight times, and through the paper, developed a readership that was very invested in Floyd’s rescue. In this song, we see the fear that this cave induced for everyone, with Miller calling Floyd “helpless, animal, hopeless.” This song never really lands in a groove, and it makes me feel as off-kilter as the character. Miller tries to get a grip, and so does the music.

Track 9 brings us “Heart An’ Hand,” where Floyd’s father, Lee, and his wife, Miss Jane, sing to each other to try to bring themselves comfort while Floyd is in peril. This song was a bit of a snooze for me, but only because I’m not super invested in Floyd’s parental relationship. In Homer and Floyd’s duet they talk about the times before their mother died, and so I know that Floyd’s mother’s death affected him (and thus, the whole family), but when it comes to the family dynamics, I’m far more invested in Homer than anyone else.

Speaking of Homer, we now get “The Riddle Song,” where Homer tells Floyd riddles. In a story so characterized by pain and loss, this is a great tune to break up the sadness. I found myself laughing out loud — these two read as real brothers with all of their banter and earnest love. This is my favorite relationship in the show.

Here I must say that the concept of having the main character trapped underneath a rock for the entirety of the show is…difficult to say the least. It doesn’t make for an active protagonist, and with the majority of the show being spent with Floyd waiting to be rescued, it’s not like he can do much but sort through his emotional life and memories.

Usually, when we talk about dramatic material, we want there to be high stakes and objectives for the characters and obstacles they must overcome. We want them to take action, to watch them do stuff. Yet Floyd doesn’t really do anything. This brings up a lot of my feelings about what does dramatic even mean?

I am currently writing a show that has a lot of waiting in it (iykyk), and I am constantly forced to investigate how physical stagnancy can feel emotionally active. I think of doctor’s waiting rooms, or the anticipation of waiting outside an audition. Those moments don’t feel passive to me. They are wracked with worry and overthinking, reflection and rumination, and ways the future can unfold. Those moments feel dramatic.

I think that when written well, internal obstacles can be very exciting and powerful. Floyd Collins takes this idea to the extreme, with the character literally unable to do anything, but I think in a lot of ways it works. It especially works with Floyd isn’t just forced to sing alone, but is given a scene partner to give his emotional life to.

One moment in “Riddle Song” that is an example of this is the following lines where Floyd spins out of reminiscing and into worrying about his (inevitable) death:

“An' I open up for my swan dive,
my spread eagle,
my Jesus-on-the-cross!
For thine is the kingdom
and the power
and the glory...
Forever an' ever...
through the flashing sun...
Ever an' ever...
Over an' over...
fallin' into that black water...
An' that rock,
stickin' up an' comin' at my face!
That cold, black grave...
cold grave...
grave...”

You can feel Floyd slowly derail in his thoughts, and then Homer has the lovely task of trying to pull him out of the depth of his consciousness and back into the moment with him.

Can you tell Homer is my favorite? (Homer also gets the best harmonies).

“Riddle Song” also divides the acts. Just as Floyd dove into the water, we now dive into “Act II, The Carnival, Is That Remarkable?” This song explores the media frenzy that surrounded Floyd’s predicament, and how a crowd of nearly 20,000 people gathered outside the cave in hopes of being a part of the hullabaloo. This is a good act two opener because it introduces the concept of the Carnival and all the characters that accompany it. It reminds us of where we left off and hints at the horrible journey while still having a light-hearted tone. I love the build of this song, and how it involves the whole ensemble.

Next, we hear “The Carnival,” sung by Miller as he is wracked with guilt over the chaos that the media has caused. It almost seems like Collins has been forgotten despite being the center of the buzz. Much of this song is instrumental, and this is just a moment I’d have to see in the theatre. I will say that the music combines typical carnival music with the instrumentation of folk music, and I love this marimba(?) sound that we get in the middle section. This is where Guettel just gets to chew the scenery and show off his compositional skills. It ends with Floyd vocalizing his yodel motif, and I am so curious about what the heck is going on onstage during this part. A weird song.

Focus shifts back to Floyd’s family with Nellie’s track, “Through the Mountain,” where she dreams of rescuing Floyd. She is frustrated that the men can go through and try to get to Floyd but she isn’t allowed. As I listen to this song, I am reminded why Guettel’s scores are so hard to sing. Not only are they tonally abnormal, but Nellie is a soprano. Go off, girly. Get those high notes.

I love the guitar lick that comes in after “what’s wrong with me?” It feels like Nellie really settles into this melody and into her thoughts. This is a classic folk tune, and after the major melodic departures of “The Carnival,” it feels wonderful to come home to something a little more simple. Something about this song reminds me of “Flowers” from Hadestown in its haunting simplicity. Though the songs are very different in content, there’s something about the floral imagery in this song that reminds me of the Anaïs tune.

We then come back to my favorite character, Homer, in “Git Comfortable.” Here, Homer is banned from the site, and he feels at a loss about what to do to help Floyd. This song in general was not my favorite (it pales in comparison to “Riddle Song” or “Daybreak”), but the harmonica in this song slaps. The grooves!! Are so good!! My head could not stop bopping along listening to this whole score.

As we near the end of Act II, we hear “The Ballad of Floyd Collins (Reprise).” I could sit here and copy and paste every word of this song into my Substack, but I will try to pare down to my favorites. This song is sung by a teenager, Jewell Estes, who sings about Floyd. This song is hands down my favorite.

Jewell says he heard Floyd praying:

“Oh my lord, have mercy on my soul
Don’t let me die alone in this dark hole
And when my savior is at hand
I’ll be sure to meet him on top of the land

I won’t go diggin' round in the hollows and holes
I’ma leave it up to the hogs and moles
Never set another foot inside a cave
If I make it out of this lonesome grave

And there he remains all alone
In a cold Kentucky hillside”

Wow. This sends chills down my spine. The vocal performance on the album is amazing, the guitar is simple, and the words really are the center of the story.

This song also brings up a thought about the structure of Floyd Collins and how somehow, this musical is all about Floyd and yet he is the least important person onstage. Floyd has a few shining moments in the sun, but I am most invested in the people around Floyd, from his family to the townspeople to the reporters to the 20,000 onlookers. It feels so much more about community grief and the sensationalization of this event, rather than Floyd’s individual experience. I don’t know if that’s a good or bad thing, it’s just a thing. I expected a show with a title that is a character name to be structured in a way that relies on one actor (think Hamilton or Sweeney Todd), but Floyd Collins is an ensemble piece to me, and the characters surrounding Floyd are the most compelling ones onstage.

Speaking of Floyd’s moments in the sun, his 11 o’clock number is “The Dream,” where he dreams that Nellie rescues him and then is later forced to reckon with his death. I think I would need to see this song staged to understand how Nellie functions in the dream. I do enjoy how the “Lucky” theme comes back with the “Time to Go” theme. This whole song has Floyd spiraling into delirium, dreaming of the cave that he set out to discover, the life he almost had. I love when a musical returns to its beginning, when it directly confronts how the characters and the setting have changed since the first downbeat. I particularly enjoy Floyd’s final moments in this show and I think I would love as an actor getting to realize that my fantasy is just that — that I am still trapped in the cave. What a dramatic moment.

In his final moments, we hear “How Glory Goes,” which is the song I have been longing for the entire musical. Especially in act two, I ached for more Floyd real estate, and I was so glad to get one more earnest moment from him before the curtain dropped. This is such a sad song, where Floyd sings to his creator, wondering what death will bring him.

I know I said it before, but I really thought I’d be admiring Guettel’s musical composition this week, and I just keep coming back to these lyrics.

Is it warm? Is it soft against your face?
Do you feel a kind of grace inside the breeze?
Will there be trees?
Is there light? Does it hover on the ground?
Does it shine from all around or just from you?

Is it endless and empty and you wander on your own?
Slowly forget about the folks that you have known?
Or does risin' bread fill up the air
From open kitchens everywhere?
Familiar faces far as you can see, like a family?

Do we live? Is it like a little town?
Do we get to look back down at who we love?
Are we above?
Are we everywhere? Are we anywhere at all?
Do we hear a trumpet call us and we’re by your side?
Will I want, will I wish
For all the things I should'a done?
Longin' to finish what I only just begun

Humans wondering about the afterlife is one of the most universal things, and thus, a subject that is hard to write original thoughts about. Yet here Guettel delivers an incredible soliloquy for Floyd, who is able to make peace with his death. It’s so hard to write a character’s death, but this moment is earned, and the most beautiful orchestrations pair up with this lyric to make it such an impactful moment.

When the yodels come back at the end?

I’m done for.

Some parting wisdom:

Wow, was that one a surprise. Some weeks I go into the listening knowing that I will love a musical. Some weeks I go in cold. And then some weeks, I dread a musical (my life has been so busy and I have lamented over taking the time to listen to a soundtrack this week), and then I am reminded why I started this Substack in the first place.

Because gems of incredible art are awaiting right under my nose, just waiting to be discovered! Guettel’s score is haunting, groovy, and packed with impeccable musical composition that blends traditional folk instrumentation with experimental melodic construction and poignant, packed lyrics.

If Adam Guettel has no fans, it’s because I’m dead.

I’m wondering if I should add Light In The Piazza to my list this year? I wasn’t planning on it, but it feels like I may need to come back to that one with my newfound appreciation.

Speaking of more Substack content:

Next week, we’re going to break into the Alan Menken canon, seize the day, and listen to Newsies. I can’t wait.

More to come soon, and happy listening!