Surviving ‘Swept Away’: A Maritime Disaster in More Ways Than One

Folk music meets disaster in 'Swept Away,' but neither the story nor the score manages to stay afloat.

A group of men in worn work eighteenth century fisherman's clothing dancing on the deck of a ship
The company of Swept Away. Emilio Madrid

Fool that I am, I was excited to hear of a new Broadway play called Swept Away, figuring it would be a sexy adaptation of the great 1974 Italian film by Lina Wertmuller, unsuccessfully remade in 2002 as an ill-advised vehicle for Madonna. So imagine my disappointment when it turned out to be a dreary saga told in only 90 minutes without intermission at Broadway’s Longacre Theatre about—get ready for it—a shipwreck. The tedious plot centers on four survivors of a maritime disaster in 1884 who, after three weeks of sick, starving, stranded desperation in a tiny lifeboat without food or water, drink the blood of one of their companions and eat his skin to stay alive. It’s a musical.

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Confession: I hate folk, rock and bluegrass, all of which comprise the score, so reviewing this torture is a dirty job, but somebody’s gotta do it. What it’s doing on Broadway is still a mystery to me, but to their fans, the reason is the opportunity it provides for widespread exposure to the music and lyrics of The Avett Brothers. They’re labeled a “roots band,” which means a combination of tuneless noise some critics seem to enjoy. I’m not one of them, and if you think there’s one recognizable melody anywhere in the treacherous mashup of 14 bland, forgettable musical yawns in the score of Swept Away, I dare you to hum it for me. The show is based on an album the Avett Brothers recorded about a British yacht called the Mignonette that capsized in 1884 on its way to Australia, but the setting has been changed to a doomed 300-ton American whaling vessel off the coast of Massachusetts. When the onstage ship embarks, there are a dozen crew members on board, but they are present only to provide some action and quickly discarded after the ship’s collapse, leaving four people alive to tell the story: the gruff and disillusioned old captain referred to only as “Captain” (Wayne Duvall); the weathered, jaded and alcoholic first mate, who answers only to the name “Mate” (John Gallagher, Jr.); an idealistic teenager identified as “Little Brother” (Adrian Blake Enscoe) a farm boy with no experience as a sailor who signed up to seek adventure at sea, anxious to see those faraway places with strange-sounding names; and his “Big Brother” (Stark Sands), who comes on board to drag him back home, but the ship sails before he can disembark, so he’s stuck on the voyage, too.  The Mignonette, it turns out, is a ship sold for scrap iron and lumber at the end of the whaling era, and this is its final trip (in more ways than one). With a plethora of depressing dilemmas and endless traumas, this is a sailing that is definitely not worth taking—for everyone on board, a pint-sized Titanic; for the audience, a Moby Dick without a fish.  

A young man with long dark hair jumps over a rope two other deck crew workers are holding
Adrian Blake Enscoe as Little Brother in Swept Away.  Emilio Madrid

The best thing in the show is the sinking of the ship. The thoughts and fears of all concerned meld with the catastrophic results of wind and rain and the sound of waves, at first gently rocked as inclement weather is signaled by the crash of thunder and the flash of lightning is signified by strobe lights, followed by the crumbling of the masts, collapsed rails and crushed riggings in Rachel Hauck’s impressive set, while the entire cast is whipped and thrashed all over the stage at the mercy of the angry sea. The sequence is the best example in the show of Michael Mayer’s ability as a director. Then it’s back to boredom while the four survivors sing about it. The only characters developed beyond an outline are the four leads, who work hard to no avail. Even this central quartet is anything but unique. We’ve seen them all in other conventional seafaring disaster movies. They’re wiped out and one foot away from death, but that doesn’t stop them from singing about it. The worthless songs all sound exactly alike while doing nothing to move the scant plot along. The Avett Brothers had no experience with lousy stage musicals, but playwright John Logan did. He’s the man who wrote the unspeakable book for Moulin Rouge. 

To everyone’s credit, Swept Away avoids any attempt to duplicate the noisy, pointless production numbers in the recent plethora of jukebox musicals, and thank goodness there is nothing in it that resembles the trashy vulgarity of Death Becomes Her. But there is nothing in it to warm the heart or produce a tear or two, either. Mate begins and ends it all 22 years later in a hospital bed with tuberculosis, while the ghosts of his dead companions urge him to tell their story for future generations to savor. Captain wants to find himself another vessel and search for his lost crew, shamed by his failure to go down with his ship. Little Brother wants to find the girlfriend he left behind. Big Brother wants to return to the farm, fall to his knees and thank God for dry land. Mate, oddly enough, plans to find a bathhouse and scrub himself clean with a bar of lavender soap. And we have to listen to them all sing about it…and sing about it…before they all keel over and die. In the end, all of the singing corpses join together to belt out, “We’re all in it together…” Wanna bet?

Swept Away | 1hr 30 mins. No intermission. | Longacre Theatre | 220 W 48th Street | 866-302-0995 | Buy Tickets Here

Surviving ‘Swept Away’: A Maritime Disaster in More Ways Than One