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Simple-minded theatrics

by Leonard Schwarz

Patronization and a lack of authenticity are the hallmarks of "Floyd Collins," the joyless folk musical that brings TheatreWorks' current season to an uninspiring close.

The production is based on the real-life story of Floyd Collins, who was pinned beneath a rock in a Kentucky cave for 15 days in 1925. A young reporter was the only person thin enough to make it down to Collins, and it was the reporter's widely syndicated -- and, ultimately, Pulitzer Prize-winning -- stories that brought national attention to Collins' plight and led to a media frenzy outside the cave.

Whether the real Collins conversed with crickets, as the musical's protagonist does, I wouldn't know. But I would bet a pair of tickets to the show that if Adam Guettel, who wrote the music and lyrics, or Tina Landau, who wrote the book and additional lyrics, visited Appalachia and encountered an adult who talked to crickets, they would report the incident to their friends as either an amusing anecdote or as a sad commentary. But they would not portray the talker-to-crickets as a primitive visionary with the soul of St. Francis.

That's the problem with "Floyd Collins." Its book, lyrics and music are filled with false notes -- celebrations of simple-mindedness that patronize the characters by treating their naivete as if it were a sign of purity. Woody Guthrie, who knew a thing or two about writing songs about the common man, never celebrated, as Guettel and Landau have done, "following sinkholes" and "counting railroad ties." But then Guthrie knew the difference between simplicity and simple-mindedness.

Guthrie also knew how to entertain. "Floyd Collins" does not. Its faux bluegrass songs are filled with faux homespun images that are meant to imbue the characters who sing them with a naive purity uncontaminated by sophistication. Expressions of wit, in dialogue or song, are nowhere to be found. Indeed, every time the play moves from the people collected outside the cave to Floyd trapped below, you know you are in for another long song about the joys of quarries or about a comparable topic that bi-coastal sophisticates imagine a good-hearted hillbilly would dream about when trapped 150 feet beneath the earth.

Above ground, the play references a media circus it makes little effort to dramatize. For a villain, it throws in a mining executive whose nominal sin is being unresponsive to the suggestions of Floyd's brother, Homer, but whose real sin is working for corporate America. The mining executive tries four different approaches to reach Floyd, and each failure further condemns him, just as each of Homer's failures are meant to ennoble Homer.

Set designer Andrea Bechert and lighting designer Pamila Gray have created a simple but effective set that allows the production and the characters to move fluidly between the entrance to the cave and the spot where Collins is trapped. Costumes by Allison Connor and sound by Garth Hemphill are also up to TheatreWorks' high standards. But musical director Tom Lindblade's arrangements only highlight the inauthentic nature of the imitation-bluegrass score by overemphasizing the banjo and harmonica.

In the title role, Matt D. Farnsworth comes across as a pussycat of a country bumpkin, high on his own natural grace. As Homer, Paul Woodson is less blissed out, but relentlessly down home. And Francis Jue, as the reporter, finds the only safe ground the play allows for someone from the city -- sincerity. How's that for dull?

What a shame for TheatreWorks that a season that began with the vitality, wit and irony of "Gypsy" ends up buried in an unconvincing monument to simple-mindedness. <@$p>

What: TheatreWorks presents the musical "Floyd Collins" When:Tuesdays through Sundays through May 6. Curtain times vary. Saturday and Sunday matinees and "Visual Voice" audio-described performances on specific dates. Where: Mountain View Center for Performing Arts, 500 Castro St. in Mountain View Tickets: $20 to $38, discounts for students, youth, seniors, members. Call (650) 903-6000 to order. For information visit www.theatreworks.org.