The Tragedy Down Below

Your assignment: Write a musical about Floyd Collins, the caver who died in a cavern in Barren County, Ky., in early 1925.

Most writers would go for the back-story up front. We’d meet Floyd above ground, as the show lays out the family dynamics, hopes and dreams, the usual drill, and then--probably at or near the close of Act 1--sends him down into the previously unexplored cave that proved to be his last adventure.

In “Floyd Collins,” the plaintive, often inspired musical by Adam Guettel and Tina Landau now at the Old Globe Theatre, Floyd gets trapped about 15 minutes into the show. Even when they’re not alone, the musical’s characters remain isolated in other ways, hemmed in by cold circumstance, whether above or below the ground. Composer-lyricist Guettel and librettist-director Landau, who also contributed additional lyrics, have approached Collins’ plight head-on, which is to say, straight down.

It’s not an approach, let alone a subject, destined to snare a lot of the “Cats” crowd. (Possible poster slogan: Floyd Collins, Now and Forever Stuck.) Those who got to know and admire “Floyd Collins” by way of its gorgeous original cast album may be in for a bit of a letdown; Landau’s book is functional without reaching the level of invention and idiosyncrasy of Guettel’s best music.

Still, Guettel’s best makes this musical worth hearing. And working with an unerring design team, Landau has staged “Floyd Collins” beautifully--not just prettily, but with images of stark, aching beauty, like bits of the shadowed past reborn.

Premiering in 1994 in Philadelphia, the show had its New York unveiling two years later at Playwrights Horizons. Most of that production’s key staff has reunited for the current incarnation, a co-production of the Old Globe (running through March 21), its original producer the American Music Theater Festival in Philadelphia (April 3-17) and Chicago’s Goodman Theatre (May 3-June 5).

Landau and company have revised the material somewhat, mostly along nip-and-tuck lines. Floyd (Romain Fruge, a little peppy for this taciturn man) remains, as the locals say, a “cavin’ fool,” eager to find the potential tourist attraction to beat all. Exploring down under, he has visions of curious hordes “tearin’ up the mountain--they’ll be campin’ in the snow!”

It comes to pass, horribly. Floyd locates a vast cavern, his meal ticket out of a hardscrabble farmer’s life. Then, squeezing up into a cubbyhole, heading toward the open air, he meets his fate, a rock the size of a leg of lamb. It lodges against Floyd’s left foot. Then both legs become pinned.

Up above, his younger brother Homer (Clarke Thorell) figures it’s just another jam out of which Floyd will wriggle. So does Floyd’s taciturn, God-fearing father, Lee (John Taylor); Lee’s second wife, granite-spirited Miss Jane (Anne Allgood); and Floyd’s tetched sister, Nellie (Kim Huber), recently released from an asylum.

By design, Guettel’s richly textured score--with its sweet bluegrass and folk strains layered atop dissonant strings reminiscent of early Aaron Copland--doesn’t come out slugging in terms of grimness. “ ‘Tween a Rock and Hard Place” is an up-tempo rouser sung early on by three of Floyd’s friends (Marty Higginbotham, Jacob Garrett White and Michael-Leon Wooley). In the ironic but sweet “Lucky,” Nellie and Miss Jane talk about Floyd having “the luck,” as well as the caving knack.

As rescue efforts continue the reporters arrive, including the Louisville Courier-Journal’s “Skeets” Miller (Guy Adkins). He enters his own story, reporting on Floyd even as he’s joining in on the rescue attempt. (The 1951 Billy Wilder film “Ace in the Hole” told the same story from an opportunistic reporter’s vantage point.) In the second act’s swing gem “Is That Remarkable?,” a trio of glib, fictionalizing reporters (Jack Donahue, James Moye and Ryan Perry) compete for “the poop.” It’s a great comic number, an easy breather melodically, spiced by Guettel’s swerving, modernist vocal lines.

If only Landau’s book had a swerve or two. For starters, she’s up against the grim inevitability of the narrative. Though Landau and Guettel have taken the correct risk in plunking Floyd down into the cavern early on, the above-ground events go pretty much the way you’d expect, focusing on in-fighting within the Collins family, and between Homer and the excavation so-called expert H.T. Carmichael (John Ahlin).

When it works, however, “Floyd Collins” really takes you somewhere. (Scott Zielinski’s supple lighting would be evocative on a bare stage, without any show at all.) Near the end we get “The Dream,” a potentially hackneyed fantasy imagined by Floyd, near death, envisioning a hero’s reception and riches for himself and his family. After he steps out of the dream to yodel down into the miracle he has discovered, he and his family wait for the echo. It never comes.

At moments like these, “Floyd Collins” fuses everything it’s after: joy and anguish, American can-do optimism and the cruel hand of crummy luck. It is a stern show, and somewhat prosaic when it isn’t singing. Some of the acting goes for the obvious--it’s too bad more of it doesn’t convey the natural charisma of Taylor’s Lee Collins, who doesn’t force a second.

But as his more recent work bears out, Guettel is a composer for the new century. He can absorb many styles without merely sampling them. When “Floyd Collins” finds its voice, as it does, tantalizingly, about half the time, you hear a wonderful sound indeed.

* “Floyd Collins,” Old Globe Theatre, Balboa Park, San Diego. Tuesdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 7 p.m.; Saturdays-Sundays, 2 p.m. Ends March 21. $23-$39. (619) 239-2255. Running time: 2 hours, 40 minutes.

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Floyd Collins

Guy Adkins: Skeets Miller

John Ahlin: H.T. Carmichael

Anne Allgood: Miss Jane

Jack Donahue: Reporter 1/Cliff Roney

Romain Fruge: Floyd Collins

Marty Higginbotham: Bee Doyle

Kim Huber: Nellie

James Moye: Reporter/Dr. Hazlett

Ryan Perry: Reporter

John Taylor: Lee Collins

Clark Thorell: Homer Collins

Jacob Garrett White: Jewell Estes

Michael-Leon Wooley: Ed Bishop

Music and lyrics by Adam Guettel. Book, additional lyrics and direction by Tina Landau. Musical direction by Ted Sperling and Rob Berman. Set by James Schuette. Costumes by Melina Root. Lighting by Scott Zielinski. Sound by Dan Moses Schreier. Stage manager Joel Rosen.