Review: On Sea Shanties, Shipwrecks, and Stark Sands: Swept Away Comes to Broadway

The “new musical tale” Swept Away at the Longacre Theatre has an eerie hook. You can practically see the words “it was a dark and stormy night” written in black and white within John Logan’s script as he begins this saga of sailors stranded in a lifeboat who turn to savagery to survive. Accentuated with songs by the Americana band the Avett Brothers, exceptional direction by Michael Mayer, and a thrilling scenic shift by Rachel Hauck, Swept Away is one of the most menacing musicals I’ve ever seen. That’s the good thing. The bad thing is that it’s boring.

Swept Away draws heavily from the Avett Brothers’s 2004 concept album Mignonette, itself inspired by a real 1880s incident in which a quartet of shipwrecked sailors resorted to cannibalism to survive after their yacht sank. Trigger warning, spoiler alert, whatever you want to call it: There is cannibalism in this 90-minute musical. Hey — it worked for Sondheim, right?

Logan presents us with four protagonists: the elderly captain of a New England whaling ship who’s on his last voyage before retirement (Wayne Duvall as “Captain”), his carousing first mate (John Gallagher Jr. with a menacing twinkle in his eye as “Mate”), a young hick farmer looking for adventure (Adrian Blake Enscoe as “Little Brother”), and his older, God-fearing sibling who inadvertently gets stuck on the ship while trying to shield him from harm (Stark Sands, Broadway’s answer to Dorian Gray, as “Big Brother”).

The first 45 minutes lull us into a false sense of security on the deck of the ship (part one of Hauck’s fascinating set) as the brothers adjust to life at sea amid a group of rowdy sailors (Susan Hilferty did their dingy costumes). The ensemble dancers swing from the ropes and stomp their feet (choreographer David Neumann gets a surprising amount of mileage out of very little) to a rousing mashup of the songs “Lord Lay Your Hand on My Shoulder” and “Ain’t No Man,” where Big Brother and Mate battle for the impressionable Little Brother’s attention. Duvall sings a wistful “May It Last,” as he comes to terms with his own redundancy. It’s a pretty routine voyage. Until.

The shipwreck that happens midway through Swept Away is one of the most effective sequences that I’ve seen onstage in a very long time. What’s most remarkable is how simple and practical it is: It doesn’t rely on fancy projections or anything, just an assortment of fans strategically blowing throughout the house, ominous sound effects (John Shivers at the top of his game), tightly focused lighting across the stage by Kevin Adams, and the floor of Hauck’s set rising to an 80-degree angle. I happily joined in the round of applause that the moment got; it’s undeniably thrilling.

For the remainder of the show, the four stars — Gallagher, Sands, Enscoe, and Duvall — are confined to a minuscule canoe that slowly rotates in circles (kudos to them for not puking). Taking a cue from Alfred Hitchcock, Mayer creates a level of immediacy and theatricality that allows us to feel like we’re in the boat along with them as they confront disaster. Little Brother is on the verge of death, his body crushed by the mast. Captain is haunted by the voices of his lost crew members as he comes to terms with not having gone down with the ship himself. And, stranded for 16 days at sea without food or fresh water, the delirious Mate and Big Brother fight once again over Little Brother — but this time, the stakes are way higher.

With a few exceptions, Swept Away tends to be more exciting in theory than in practice. As standalone songs on an album, the Avett tunes are lovely and haunting. They are beautifully performed by the cast, especially Enscoe, whose rendition of “A Gift for Melody Anne” is nothing short of angelic. However, by the time we get to the fifth string-heavy ballad about longing or fearing God, we long for variety in both melody and in Brian Usifer and Chris Miller’s countrified orchestrations. The music blends together as an amalgam of folk songs that stop the action instead of propelling it forward.

While Logan’s script does tend to go round in circles, I appreciated the economy of its storytelling. He gives us little backstory and no extraneous information, which would normally be a problem but isn’t, because the characters are all archetypes. I do wish there was less narration; the way it gets wrapped in a neat little bow of “and then this happened” is especially frustrating in a piece that is so purposefully messy.

The biggest issue is that I don’t know who Swept Away is geared toward. You can’t take your kids (unless you want to give them nightmares), it’s inappropriate for date night (unless you want an awkward ride home), and it’s too grim and weird for the tourist market. Maybe they’ll defy the odds — for artistic reasons, I hope they do — but I ultimately expect Swept Away will be pulled out to sea in the next tide.