Lincoln Center Theater‘s upcoming Broadway production of Adam Guettel beloved cult musical Floyd Collins will star Jeremy Jordan in the title role, producers announced today, confirming a rumor that’s been buzzing through New York’s theater community for weeks.
Talk of Jordan’s involvement spiked Tuesday when producers of Broadway’s The Great Gatsby announced that actor Ryan McCartan would soon be taking over the lead role of that musical from the exiting Jordan.
The LCT production, which begins previews at the Vivian Beaumont Theater on Thursday, March 27, 2025, and opens on Monday, April 21, will also feature Jason Gotay as Homer Collins, Sean Allan Krill as H.T. Carmichael, Marc Kudisch as Lee Collins, Lizzy McAlpine as Nellie Collins, Wade McCollum as Bee Doyle, Jessica Molaskey as Miss Jane, Taylor Trensch as Skeets Miller, and Cole Vaughan as Jewell Estes, with an ensemble of Kevin Bernard, Dwayne Cooper, Jeremy Davis, Charlie Franklin, Kristen Hahn, Happy McPartlin, Kevyn Morrow, Zak Resnick, Justin Showell, Colin Trudell, and Clyde Voce.
Directing will be Tina Landau, who wrote the musical’s book, with music and lyrics by Adam Guettel (additional lyrics by Landau).
Based on the true story of cave explorer Floyd Collins, who in 1925 went spelunking in an area that’s now part of Kentucky’s Mammoth Cave National Park. Hoping to establish Sand Cave as a tourist attraction, Collins, as the musical’s synopsis puts it, “becomes the attraction when he gets trapped 200 feet underground.”
“Alone but for sporadic contact with the outside world, including his brother Homer, Floyd fights for his sanity – and, ultimately, his life – as the rescue effort above explodes into the first genuine media circus.”
The media frenzy that descended on the area, with a radio-listening national audience tuned in as Floyd’s life slipped increasingly away over days and days of isolation, would later inspire the classic 1951 film Ace in the Hole starring Kirk Douglas.
The Guettel-Landau collaboration had its world premiere at the American Music Theater Festival in Philadelphia in 1994, followed by a 25-performance Off Broadway debut at Playwrights Horizons in 1996. The cast recording from the ’96 staging, featuring Christopher Innvar, Jason Danieley and Theresa McCarthy, took on a life of its own, turning Floyd Collins into a sort of contemporary-theater holy grail. Songs from the musical have been recorded by Audra McDonald, Brian Stokes Mitchell and Kelli O’Hara, and helped establish the career of Guettel, who’d go on to write the acclaimed The Light in the Piazza and Days of Wine and Roses.
The Broadway premiere production will have sets by dots, costumes by Anita Yavich, lighting by Scott Zielinski, sound by Dan Moses Schreier, and projections by Ray Sun, with dance sequences by Jon Rua. Lincoln Center Theater is producing in association with Creative Partners Productions and Mark Cortale & Charles D. Urstadt.
