A new production of Adam Guettel's critically acclaimed musical Floyd Collins from Chicago's BoHo Theatre company has opened and is earning accolades anew for the piece. "I can't imagine a better revival of a show that makes most of the Broadway musicals of the past decade look like shiny, tawdry junk," exclaims the Wall Street Journal, which calls Floyd Collins "a masterpiece." The Chicago Sun-Times says "the production is utterly enthralling." Also playing in Chicago, at the Theo Ubique Cabaret Theatre, is Guettel's 2005 Tony Award-winning musical, The Light in the Piazza.
A new production of Floyd Collins, the critically acclaimed 1996 musical from composer/lyricist Adam Guettel and writer Tina Landau, has opened at the Theater Wit in Chicago and is earning accolades anew for the piece. The new BoHo Theatre company production, directed by Peter Marston Sullivan, continues with performances this weekend and every weekend through July 15.
Applauded by both music and theater critics following its off-Broadway premiere in 1996, Floyd Collins, a richly inventive “folk musical," was hailed as the dawn of an important new voice in American theater. The music, captured in the original cast recording on Nonesuch pictured at left, is a synthesis of bluegrass, country, and Broadway, ranging from tuneful ballads to up-tempo ensemble numbers.
Floyd Collins is based on a 1925 incident involving a Kentucky spelunker in search of his fortune who was trapped for several days in a cave. Collins’s tragic ordeal spawned a national media frenzy, and the ensuing circus-like atmosphere created by the media, rescuers and curious onlookers captivated the entire nation.
"Before The Light in the Piazza, there was Floyd Collins, in which Adam Guettel and Tina Landau teamed up to create the first great post-Sondheim musical, a work of supremely compelling originality," writes the Wall Street Journal drama critic Terry Teachout in a review of the new production. "I can't imagine a better revival of a show that makes most of the Broadway musicals of the past decade look like shiny, tawdry junk."
Teachout goes on to describe Floyd Collins as " a masterpiece," concluding that "BoHo Theatre's revival brings it to impassioned life for the first time in far too long."
Read the complete review at wsj.com.
The Chicago Sun-Times' Hedy Weiss says "the production is utterly enthralling. The score—a haunting mix of bluegrass, folk ballad, vaudeville and more—is wonderfully rendered in almost conversational tones by an ensemble of authentic faces and fine voices." Read more at suntimes.com.
For more information and tickets to the BoHo Theatre production of Floyd Collins, go to bohotheatre.com.
Chicago is also home to a production of Adam Guettel's 2005 Tony Award-winning musical The Light in the Piazza at the Theo Ubique Cabaret Theatre. The sold-out production, originally scheduled to run till April 29, has been extended through July 14. For details, go to theo-u.com.
- Log in to post comments
