Montco-raised singer Lizzy McAlpine to make Broadway debut in ‘Floyd Collins’
The 'ceilings' singer, who played the Met last summer, has always had her eyes set on Broadway
Singer Lizzy McAlpine, best known for indie tunes like “ceilings” and “doomsday,” is bringing her musical talents to the Broadway stage this spring.
As reported by Deadline, the Montgomery County native will be a part of the cast in an upcoming production of Floyd Collins, which opens on April 21 at New York City’s Vivian Beaumont Theater.
The musical is based on the true story of American cave explorer Floyd Collins, who went spelunking in 1925 in an area now part of Kentucky’s Mammoth Cave National Park. While Collins hoped to find a gold mine and turn Sand Cave into a tourist attraction, he wound up being trapped inside the cave, becoming a media spectacle himself.
Tony Award-nominee Jeremy Jordan, who’s currently starring in The Great Gatsby on Broadway, will lead the cast as the titular character. McAlpine will be playing Nellie Collins, Floyd’s sister. Other cast members include Jason Gotay as Homer Collins, Sean Allan Krill as H.T. Carmichael, Marc Kudisch as Lee Collins, per Deadline reports.
“Guys this show and this cast are everything to me I’m freaking out I can’t wait,” McAlpine wrote on X.
The 25-year-old singer, who grew up in Narberth and graduated from Lower Merion High School in 2018, has always had Broadway dreams. “[I] pretty much started singing once I could open my mouth,” McAlpine told The Inquirer in June. When she was 8, she said, her grandmother started taking her and her sibling Emory to Broadway shows.
“Beauty and the Beast, The Lion King, Mary Poppins, all that stuff. My mom listens to Wicked in the car. I was around musicals all the time, so it seeped into me,” McAlpine said.
She first started performing in Lower Merion productions of musicals and plays like Noises Off and Arcadia. At 12, she started writing songs, posting them along with covers of Dodie, Tori Kelly, and Adele, first to Soundcloud, and later Instagram and YouTube.
Her debut album, Give Me a Minute, was released in 2020 in the midst of the COVID-19 lockdown, which meant she couldn’t tour behind it. Her second album, Five Seconds Flat, propelled her to indie music stardom especially with the blockbuster track “ceilings.”
Following the release of McAlpine’s third album Older in April, the “Movie Star” singer played at The Met Philadelphia for her “The Older Tour 2024″ in June. She has played the Theatre of Living Arts and opened for English songwriter Dodie at the Fillmore, a venue she later headlined herself. She also opened for Coldplay at Lincoln Financial Field, last year.
McAlpine now lives in LA where she said she misses “the way the weather changes” in Philly and Wawa. “My order’s kind of weird. I get a tuna club sandwich. Which is amazing. The brownies are incredible. And usually the Apple Peanut Butter Dipper. Or a soft pretzel,” she said.
Tina Landau, who wrote the musical’s book, will be the director and Adam Guettel will head music and lyrics with additional lyrics by Landau. This production of Floyd Collins premiered in Philadelphia at the American Music Theater Festival in 1994. The musical then held 25 off-Broadway performances at Playwrights Horizons in 1996.
The musical previews on March 27 at the Beaumont before opening on April 21. Tickets are on sale Dec. 12. lct.org/shows/floyd-collins