"Swept Away" sets the band's folksy sound to a grizzly survival tale. It's a curious combination with iffy results.
Surviving a shipwreck and facing a gruesome lifeboat decision (you know the kind) is an unlikely subject for a musical. But "Swept Away" has washed up on Broadway via a much-trafficked route in contemporary theater: Load up on existing tracks from a popular recording artist -- the Avett Brothers, in this case -- assemble a crew with bona fides and set sail.
The sink-or-swim question of why finds this motley morality tale, which played Arena Stage last year and Berkeley Rep in 2022, floating in murky waters. (A flummoxed patron on the night I attended exclaimed afterward, "What was the point of that?" I suspect it won't be an isolated sentiment.)
When the Avett Brothers wrote "Mignonette," a concept album inspired by the 1884 sinking of a British yacht of that name, they did not have a stage show in mind (the way Anaïs Mitchell did with the record that became "Hadestown," for example). Nor does the dilemma of forced cannibalism, such as it's hastily explored in a brief climax, have even symbolic everyday resonance -- to say nothing of its commercial appeal.
Could it be that relocating the port of departure to New England, among whalers toiling in a dying trade, has something to say about the plight of America's working class? Maybe. But the book by John Logan, a Hollywood screenwriter whose stage credits include "Moulin Rouge!," deals in stock characters and extreme situations. The doomed shipmates have only enough time, during the intermissionless 90 minutes, to announce themselves in broad strokes before they're sunk.
Mate, a mop of chestnut curls played by John Gallagher Jr., is urged on his deathbed by the ghosts of his compatriots to "tell our story," "release us" and "release himself." That premise would be better served by a less slippery and more sympathetic narrator: By the time they are stranded at sea and Big Brother (Stark Sands) demands to know "what manner of man" Mate is when he suggests carving up Little Brother (Adrian Blake Enscoe) for sustenance, we hardly know how to answer.
At least Captain (Wayne Duvall) has a clear if one-note trait on which to hang his hat: duty to his family, his sailors and the open water. And it's perhaps no surprise that the brothers become the story's glimmer of heart: Little Bro craves adventure while Big Bro clings to their family farm, a tension that only strengthens their bond until the grizzly end.
But Mate himself remains an empty vessel when he ought to be an engine. Gallagher seems intent to make up for the character's lack of depth by squeezing the most from small moments. But swarthy, surface-level charm can only carry him so far.
The staging by director Michael Mayer (who collaborated with Green Day on the "American Idiot" musical) is constrained first by the narrow bow of the whaling ship and then by the even smaller lifeboat carrying its four survivors. The element of confinement is apt, and the ship-in-a-bottle atmosphere jibes with the show's presentational storytelling. But it's tough to escape the feeling that the production and the audience are stranded together until it's over.
The buoyant, folksy appeal of the Avett Brothers' music, which includes many songs from "Mignonette" plus a handful more, is better suited to the promise of embarkation than to the dark fate that awaits. A scruffy ensemble crowds the deck for mildly rousing stomp-and-clap numbers (choreographed by David Neumann) that celebrate the camaraderie of seafaring. (The Bushwick-meets-Portland costumes are by Susan Hilferty.) But once the boat goes belly-up (a technical marvel by set designer Rachel Hauck), the vibe mismatch with mid-tempo bluegrass turns nearly comedic.
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Songs like the brotherly duet "Murder in the City" have a lovely narrative poetry, but pop conventions -- broken-record choruses that repeat but don't elaborate, the consistency of the band's overall sound -- are a burden onstage. The musical numbers, which tend to stop the action cold, lack variation within and among themselves so that they both blend together and invariably overstay their welcome.
There is a quandary about survival worth chewing on here -- not the one onstage, but what we're all doing at the theater these days and why. There's no one right answer. But arriving at a compelling one often means charting a less familiar course.
Swept Away, ongoing at the Longacre Theatre in New York. 90 minutes with no intermission. sweptawaymusical.com.
