Floyd Collins, the Adam Guettel-Tina Landau musical which played an acclaimed but relatively short run at New York's Playwrights Horizons in 1996, may reach New York audiences again in 1999. Original director Landau is mounting a mini-tour of regional U.S. theatres which may end at the Brooklyn Academy of Music's 1999 Next Wave Festival, said Tom Briggs (July 14), a representative of the Rodgers and Hammerstein Organization, which handles the rights to Guettel's work.

The tour will begin at the Old Globe Theatre in San Diego, opening Feb. 18, 1999 for a run through Mar. 21, 1999. It will then travel to the American Musical Theatre Festival in Philadelphia, where it will open a new festival space, playing Apr. 7-18, 1999. (Floyd Collins had its premiere at the festival in 1994). From there, the production will go to the Goodman Theatre in Chicago, for a May 3-June 5, 1999 run. Briggs told PBOL that talks with BAM are ongoing, but that the show hopes to find a place in the Next Wave Festival in fall 1999. He added that more regional stops might be added between the Goodman and BAM gigs.

Floyd Collins concerns the celebrated case of the title character, a Kentucky cave-explorer who got wedged in one of his discoveries in 1925 and whose rescue effort created a media sensation. It began previews at Playwrights Horizons on Feb. 9, 1996 and opened March 3. Floyd Collins has music and lyrics by Adam Guettel. Tina Landau, his collaborator on that project, wrote the book and additional lyrics. The show won the 1996 Lucille Lortel Award as Best Off-Broadway Musical.

The New York cast featured Christopher Innvar, Matthew Bennett, Don Chastain, Brian d'Arcy James, Cass Morgan and Michael Mulheren, among others. The cast for the tour has not been selected, though Briggs said there was a possibility it may include some of the original players.

--By Robert Simonson