Floyd Collins – just one night

By Diana Simmonds

April 20 2010

CHANCES ARE you’ve not seen the musical Floyd Collins and Anne-Maree McDonald thinks this is a real shame. “I find the music thrilling,” she says of the show for which she was engaged as musical director by the late Kookaburra outfit. Unfortunately, the production died along with the company but not before McDonald had become infected with a determination to put it in front of an audience. Somehow, some day.

McDonald is a genuine multi-talent: an operatic soprano who’s equally at home in musical theatre, a fabulous pianist, a skilled musical director and, if that’s not enough, she’s also gorgeous and has chutzpah and courage to spare.

“It was 2006 and I’d had my arm sawn off in an operation and I thought I’d never play again, or worse,” she says casually.

Excuse me? could we just back up and play that again?

“I had a massive tumour on my left humerus,” she explains patiently. “It was removed and I was in London and Peter [Cousens, singer-actor, former boss of former Kookaburra] rang and said he wanted to do Floyd Collins and wanted me to be musical director. I hired a studio and played the score one-handed and I loved it. And I thought, if I die soon I really want to have done Floyd Collins.”

Happily McDonald made a great recovery – she plays the piano like an angel and with both hands – but, as students of the industry know, it was the show that didn’t make it. And this is why McDonald has put her all into assembling a top-notch cast (the original line-up from 2007) for a staged concert performance at the City Recital Hall, next month.

“Some of us have a real passion for the show,” says McDonald. “Michael Falzon is flying back from London to do it, and the rest of the cast will be putting everything into it too.”

The rest of the cast being: Trisha Crowe, Phillip Hinton, Queenie van de Zandt, Nick Simpson Deeks, James Millar, Peter Meredith, Elliott Weston, Andrew Conaghan and Phillip Dodd.

The show, written by Adam Guettel with book and lyrics by Tina Landau, is based on the true story of a Kentucky spelunker (caver) who becomes trapped by a rockfall while looking for gold. As the story of his misfortune spreads above ground, a media circus gathers. Attempts to rescue Floyd are unsuccessful and the drama intensifies. Floyd is finally freed in death and his spirit soars with the song “How Glory Goes” – the very one that Stephen Sondehim has said he wishes he’d written himself.

It’s an unusual subject for a musical, you might say, but the same could be said of Carousel and Oliver!, both of which are grounded in tragedy as well as wonderful music.

It’s not simple music,” says McDonald. “It’s not a musical you can just pull off without thinking or working on it. It’s not Hats Off, for instance, where you can do 28 charts in a day. It’s not big either, more of a chamber musical.”

This may well be because composer Guettel (grandson of Richard Rodgers, son of Mary Rodgers, protege of Oscar Hammerstein) has written for an unusual but what you might call site-specific ensemble: it’s Kentucky so there's bluegrass; it’s America, so there's jazz; it’s ultimately a redemptive tragedy, so there are spirituals and the band of nine musicians play, between them, strings (a quartet), banjo, harmonicas, guitars, electric keyboards and grand piano.

“The musicians are fantastic,” McDonald enthuses. “SSO string players – you know what I mean. It’s a wonderful piece and I really want people to experience it.

She’s right: you’ll be sorry if you miss it and the tickets are a bargain. Be there or you won’t have anything to say on Facebook.<./p>

FLOYD COLLINS, City Recital Hall, Angel Place, Monday May 3, 2010; 7.30pm; tickets: $55/$49; 8256 2222 or www.cityrecitalhall.com