REVIEW: Swept Away

SWEPT AWAY

The Avett Brothers are now on Broadway – not as performers, but the creators of a new musical, Swept Away, which just opened at the Longacre Theatre. The concept grew out of their 2004 CD, Mignonette, which drew on the story of an 1884 shipwreck of a yacht off the coast of England. When John Logan, the writer of Red, Moulin Rouge, and more, began to adapt the album into a stage production, he turned it into a whaling ship out of New Bedford, MA, which sets out to sea, runs into a massive storm and is wrecked, leaving only four sailors in a lifeboat.

Those four are played by John Gallagher, Jr. (whom I first saw as a Tony winner in Spring Awakening 20 years ago) as first mate, Stark Sands (a Tony nominee for the original Kinky Boots) as the older of two brothers, Adrian Blake Enscoe (an actor and member of the hot Brooklyn band Bandits on the Run) as his younger brother, and veteran character actor Wayne Duvall as the captain. The show opens with Gallagher as the first mate in a hospital bed, surrounded by the other three as ghosts, telling him that their story must be told.

In the taut 95-minute production (without intermission), the characters’ motivations are clear. The first mate is content with the sailor’s life, the younger brother wants adventure, the older brother wants him to return home to the farm, and the captain wants it to be his last voyage. (Little does he know.)

The drama comes from the tension within the lifeboat, as their ordeal grows from six days to 21, without food or water, and they contemplate their fate (cannibalism?), which obviously entails certain ethical issues. Not a topic that will make people run to the box office. They won’t run from the theater, though, because the Avetts’ music is so tuneful and the staging in the first half, before the shipwreck, is so engaging. The ship set, with sailors hanging on rope ladders, and hearty dancing from the all-male ensemble, belies the tragedy to come.

The sound, light and scenic design of the storm is a coup de theatre, and the use of a revolving lifeboat is a clever way to indicate their time at sea. Michael Mayer, who directed Spring Awakening and so many other Broadway hits, makes the most of the material. However, there’s no way to prevent that from being static, even as the tension grows and the sailors consider their plight and the moral dilemma. What keeps it from lagging is Gallagher’s gut-wrenching performance as the first mate and his recounting the effect of the journey on him and his fellow sailors, trying to get home from the sea with their sanity.

The odds of an original production like this, based on the work of singer-songwriters, not a traditional jukebox musical, becoming a hit are difficult, without major stars and an upbeat ending. Think of Sting’s The Last Ship, Paul Simon’s The Capeman, or Steve Martin and Edie Brickell’s Bright Star. Broadway history is littered with artistically promising commercial failures. Anais Mitchell’s Hadestown, which is still playing, right opposite Swept Away on 48th St., is the rare exception. Will you be swept away? Maybe not, but if you enjoy the folk-rock melodies of the Avett Brothers, the solid performances of the principals, the creative direction, and the message of redemption, that might be enough.

Photo by Emilio Madrid