It’s hard to imagine a bleaker jukebox musical than Swept Away, which compiles a bunch of songs from the folk-rock band The Avett Brothers into a pitch-dark story about a 19th-century whaling vessel that sets out from New England, runs afoul of an ocean storm, and strands the captain and three sailors on a lifeboat for weeks without water or food aside from, well, each other. Yes, John Logan’s book presents a version of that modern cannibalism-at-sea classic Life of Pi — without the tiger, the poetic subtext, or a set of characters that anyone can care about.
The collaborators lift songs from the Avett Brothers’ catalog, many from the 2004 concept album Mignonette that featured multiple tunes about a similar incident involving the four survivors of a wrecked English yacht that sank off the coast of South Africa in the 1880s. (That case led to the conviction of two survivors for the killing, and consumption, of the cabin boy.) It makes sense to move the scene to America’s coastal waters, a better fit for the rootsy all-American musical style of the band with its liberal use of accordion, harmonica, and banjo. But there’s a reason why even the best jukebox musicals find ways to adapt hits to their new theatrical circumstances, to use songs to advance the story or our understanding of the characters.
There are some songs that work just fine, including a shanty-like tune called “Hard Worker” performed by the all-male ensemble as they load up the whaling ship (strikingly designed by Rachel Hauck) to foot-stomping choreography by David Neumann that suits a bunch of callus-handed sailors. Others are more of a stretch for the material, like a tune called “Murder in the City” sung as the crew is days away from shore and far from any metropolis that might prove dangerous.
About midway through this 90-minute, intermissionless show, the ship sinks in a spectacular coup-de-théâtre moment magnificently staged by director Michael Mayer and his design team (shout out to Kevin Adams’s lighting and John Shivers’s sound work). There’s even the sensation of gusting wind as the mast and rigging disappear and the ship’s deck lifts to reveal a mirrored wall space that provides an overhead view of the lifeboat beneath where the rest of the show unfolds.
The post-storm scenes are a very long sit, made longer by Logan’s meandering, plot-free script and a sense of dread for exactly how the long-foreshadowed tragedy will be staged. (Rest assured, the violence is as understated as the rest of the drama.) The problem is that we never learn much about our central quartet of characters, including their names. John Gallagher Jr.’s Mate narrates the tale, and it’s clear from the outset that he’s the driving force behind the fateful decision aboard that lifeboat even though we have no real sense of what biographical or personal forces motivate him. We know he used to be a carpenter (he gets to sing a scaled-down version of the 2012 song “The Once and Future Carpenter”) and we see him thumbing his nose at the religiosity of the ship’s newest hires: an enthusiastic, adventure-seeking newbie (Adrian Blake Enscoe) and his uber-responsible older brother (Stark Sands), who’s left his farm to chase after his sibling and then gets stuck on board. But there are no signs of the Mate’s villainy — nor, for that matter, of a backstory that would suggest an unquenchable thirst for life at any cost. At least, until the show hands him a late confessional number, titled “Satan Pulls the Strings,” that includes lyrics like “baby’s in the cradle” that have no connection to the man we’ve spent the rest of the evening struggling to understand.
It’s puzzling why the show is centered on Gallagher’s Mate at all, instead of the Captain (Wayne Duvall), whose characterization is the most fleshed out of the bunch (though barely so). He’s a longtime seadog, on boats since he was 8 and all too aware that by 1888 whaling is a dying industry and that his ship is scheduled to be sold for scrap after this voyage. While he has a wife and children back home, we never learn much about them or his interest in spending more time with them upon retirement. More tellingly, we never hear why this man, initially torn up about not going down with his ship and most of his crew, proves so willing to cede his authority to someone else when his leadership matters the most. That may be the most interesting question raised, but any answer proves as elusive as a rescue vessel.
A lot of craft has been poured into Swept Away, from the physical production to a ship-shape cast whose voices blend into wonderful harmonies like a loyal crew of old salts. Gallagher’s singing is the rootsiest of the bunch, while his speaking voice seems to drift across the map accent-wise. Enscoe, a fresh-faced newcomer with shoulder-length hair, has a clear, bright tenor that captures the unbridled innocence of youth. And Sands, re-teaming with his American Idiot co-star Gallagher, offers a steady, grounded presence and a lilting baritone to the Older Brother and hymnlike songs such as “Lord Lay Your Hand on My Shoulder.” Gallagher, Enscoe, and Sands sound terrific, bringing different flavors to the folksy score — though all three have the anachronistic hairstyles of a Brooklyn-based Avett Brothers cover band rather than men you might see in period photographs of a New England whaling ship’s crew.
Despite all this effort, Swept Away hasn’t found a rationale for telling its nightmarish story. We don’t have enough sense of these individuals to care about their fate, and we only get glancing references to larger moral questions that might implicate us, or make us consider how we might respond in such extreme circumstances. The show has the power to shake us up, but then it merely tosses us overboard and sets us a adrift, floating on troubled seas without a clear destination.
SWEPT AWAY
Longacre Theatre, Broadway
Running time: 90 minutes (no intermission)
Tickets on sale through May 25
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