The cavernous Vivian Beaumont theater at Lincoln Center is a surprisingly brilliant choice for staging the Broadway premiere of Floyd Collins, Tina Landau and Adam Guettel’s 1994 musical about a man trapped in a tunnel dozens of feet underground. While the stage itself is massive, Landau’s intelligent staging, dots’ effective sets and Scott Zielinski’s haunting lighting create a sense of claustrophobia that only grows as the show goes on.

Based on the true story of one of America’s first media circuses, the musical follows the titular Floyd, a working-class man who, in 1925, set out to find a subterranean cave that would become a tourist attraction and lift his Kentucky family out of poverty. Instead, when a falling rock pinned his foot in a narrow passageway, he was trapped underground, and the country excitedly followed the efforts to rescue him—forgetting about the very real person struggling to survive.

It’s not the usual stuff of musicals, but it’s certainly emotional, and sometimes, that’s all you need. Guettel’s score incorporates a good amount of bluegrass music and country ballads to evoke the time and place, and Bruce Coughlin’s orchestrations (under Ted Sperling’s baton in the orchestra pit) do a lot to convey a wide range of emotions. Landau’s book nicely balances the media circus aboveground with the human drama below. As the show goes on, the audience comes to care about all of the characters and what they stand to lose in different ways—money, career, family and lives..

Jeremy Jordan gives what well may be the performance of his career as Floyd, simultaneously jovial and introspective and struggling valiantly to keep his sense of humor as his situation becomes increasingly dire. In his hands, Floyd becomes painfully human and sympathetic, and his plight becomes genuinely terrifying. This is all the more remarkable given that once Floyd is trapped in the tunnel, Jordan rarely moves from stage left and remains largely motionless in a piece of scenery that genuinely comes to look like a twisting, narrow tunnel . By sheer force of will, he makes the audience believe that Floyd cannot move from his spot, and it’s genuinely surprising when he does stand up in the few fantasy moments when Floyd imagines his freedom.

As Floyd’s brother Homer, Jason Gotay is truly heartbreaking, struggling to remain optimistic as he is forced to accept that his brother may never make it back above ground. His chemistry with Jordan is excellent, and he conveys his character’s stress and hope with equal skill.

Taylor Trensch gets one of the show’s strongest emotional journeys as the journalist Skeets Miller, eager to make his name as a reporter but fully aware of the very real people who are suffering and struggling behind his sudden success. He makes Skeets’ conflict painfully recognizable and sympathetic.

Marc Kudisch gets less to do as Floyd’s blustery father, but sings beautifully and conveys a powerful blend of fear for his son’s life and ambition for what fame could bring him. Jessica Molaskey, often the secret sauce in a number of strong musicals over the years, is quietly powerful as Miss Jane, Floyd’s sensible stepmother who remains a source of calm stability as Floyd’s situation grows into an almost literal circus.

Recording artist Lizzy McAlpine makes a stunning Broadway debut as Nellie, Floyd’s emotionally fragile sister who has just come home from a stay in a mental hospital only to find herself in a horrifically stressful crisis. Her scenes with her family are beautiful and powerfully emotional, and while few ballads stop a musical in its tracks, her gentle solo late in Act II is a showstopper in all the best ways.

Audiences seeking pure escapism should probably seek other musicals, but audiences looking for an intelligent character study will find much to love in Floyd Collins.