Kookaburra buries Floyd Collins
A sad media release (September 26) from the offices of Peter Cousens' embattled Kookaburra company announcing the cancellation of the third and final show of the 2007 season.
"Sad" because it was obvious from the beginning that Floyd Collins would be a tricky show to sell to the public; and so it has proved. Poor ticket sales has forced the company to pull the plug before the advertised opening on November 6 at Sydney Theatre.
Peter Cousens was to have starred in the show, as the real-life American miner trapped underground in 1925, with Michael Falzon and a strong company backing him up. These included creatives such as designer Brian Thomson, director Kate Gaul and costume designer Tim Chappel and a cast which featured Josef Ber, Trisha Crowe, Philip Dodd, Sean Hall, Peter Meredith, James Millar, Nick Simpson-Deeks, Bruce Spence, Queenie van de Zandt and Elliott Weston.
Why Cousens chose Floyd Collins remains an unanswered question at the moment because he is currently "not available for comment." The show, book and lyrics by Tina Landau and Adam Guettel, has had the proverbial checkered history since its first outing in 1994. When it arrived in New York in 1996, Ben Brantley ominously wrote in the The New York Times:
If earnestness alone were what made a musical great, Floyd Collins would be in the stratosphere of Oklahoma! and Gypsy. Tina Landau and Adam Guettel's ambitious, tuneful lesson in American history ... radiates good faith, moral seriousness and artistic discipline.
Unfortunately, when it comes to making a musical really pulse, goodness -- as Mae West might have observed -- has nothing (or very little) to do with it. Floyd Collins the story of how a man trapped in a Kentucky cave became a national obsession in 1925, definitely has more to recommend it than its virtuous intentions: not least, the genuine beauty of much of Ms. Landau's staging and Mr. Guettell's score. But these assets are exasperatingly undercut by the flatness, repetitiveness and blunt sentimentality of the show's book and lyrics, also the work of Ms. Landau and Mr. Guettel.
On the other hand, Stephen Sondheim is quoted as having a rather different opinion. Apparently when asked what his favourite new musical was in London or New York, his answer was: "It's called Floyd Collins and ... if you don't know it, get to know it."
Lyn Gardner, writing in The Guardian of the 1999 London production said, inter alia: "This is not a fully developed evening either dramatically, musically or in terms of characterisation. But although it will hardly appeal to claustrophobics or aficionados of the blockbuster style of musical, it will do anyone with an interest in the post-Sondheim type of musical just fine."
(And in London it played in the 150-seat Bridewell Theatre, so a mixed review and less than full houses wouldn't have been quite as disastrous as trying to fill the 850-seat Sydney Theatre.)
Floyd Collins is the story of a young Kentucky miner who tries to turn a cave into a tourist attraction, is trapped underground and dies before he can be rescued. It was, according to newspaper accounts, one of the first public media frenzies with tens of thousands flocking to the cave site to await he outcome. It seems, however, that Sydneysiders in 2007 weren't so rapt in the idea.
It remains to be seen whether Kookaburra can survive this latest setback after the less anticipated (and much more embarrassing) debacle of the truncated performance of Company which had Stephen Sondheim up in arms and generated gruesome mention in the press around the world.
It is to be hoped that Cousens and Co can hang on into 2008 as the three shows announced would seem to be as likely to find ticket-buyers as poor Floyd Collins did not. The trio of shows are an Australian show: the 2002 Pratt Prize for Best Musical winner, Sideshow Alley, it's followed by Andrew Lloyd Webber's Tell Me On a Sunday (opening out of Sydney and touring before coming to town) and finally, the one an awful lot of people would probably like to see: Little Women, based on the Louisa May Alcott classic. We shall see.
You can hear an interview with Peter Cousens where he discusses Floyd Collins, Kookaburra, and the controversial understudy policy in episode 43 of Stagecast.
