The company of Swept Away (Photo: Emilio Madrid)

Swept Away

By Julia Polinsky

Swept Away is a standout entry in the grim-but-entertaining Fall 2024 Broadway season. It's a solid tell-don't-show work, in which a narrator talks to the audience to tell a story, at least partly in flashback (book by John Logan). Michael Mayer's direction makes the most of this storytelling technique, a solid cast, and some lovely music. It is actually a jukebox musical with a healthy dose of morality.

Thankfully, to enjoy the music, you don't need to know the show is built around two albums from the hugely popular Avett Brothers. It's an exuberant score, with lovely, quiet moments too. Just as exuberant, the stomping, clapping, acrobatic dancing from the ensemble (choreography by David Neumann); the breathtaking stagecraft (scenic design, Rachel Hauck) and terrific sound (John Shivers): all these high-energy goings-on are bookended by death and dying. Also by self-sacrifice and redemption. Eventually, after some terrible events.

In a solidly downbeat opening, three ghosts appear to a dying man in a tuberculosis ward and command him to tell their tale. Over the next hour and a half, he does so - and a very grim tale it is. Swept Away focuses on these four characters 20 years earlier, when they were all living men and shipped out on a whaler out of New Bedford. They are, alas, one-dimensional characters, who are played by excellent actors, so why can't you remember their names?

It's not their fault; it's in the script: they're Captain (Wayne Duvall), Mate (Tony-winner John Gallagher, Jr.), Big Brother (Stark Sands), and Little Brother (Adrian Blake Enscoe). Captain is old and tired; Mate, a gambling, drinking, whoring troublemaker; Little Brother, the pie-eyed optimist who runs away from the farm to adventure at sea, and Big Brother, a pious, annoyingly upright preacher wannabe who comes to the ship get Little Brother back, but ends up on the crew, as it has pulled away from the dock before he can get off. 

Just in case you didn't get the metaphors for modern life: Captain can easily be seen as the oldsters among us, exhausted by the shock of the new and unable to cope with such life-changing events as AI Everywhere. Mate, the knife-toting degenerate who will do anything to get by, another familiar person in these days. Big Brother, the embodiment of faith but sometimes accidentally goes off the rails, and Little Brother, every bit as eager for adventure as a golden retriever puppy with his first tennis ball: he embodies all those who are ready to embrace what's next.

These four are Us.

What we are not, we hope, is shipwreck survivors in a lifeboat. After these men survive storm and sinking (great stagecraft here, down to the wind blowing through the audience), the second half of this 90-minute/no intermission show takes place with them in a lifeboat. Sitting. Moving a little, but action in this half of Swept Away comes from the lifeboat slowly spinning. They don't even exchange places in the boat, possibly because Little Brother has been smashed by wreckage and cannot move. The audience can also see the reflection of the actors in the inexplicable looming, mirrored remaining piece of the ship's hull.

Wayne Duvall, John Gallagher, Jr., Stark Sands and Adrian Blake Enscoe.(Photo: Emilio Madrid)

Well. It's a shipwreck story, and Mate has been carrying a knife on his belt all through the show. After 16 days in a lifeboat without food and only a little rainwater, you can see the horrible event coming. There's a twist, though, of heartfelt self-sacrifice just at the crux, and then Mate returns to Telling the Tale, and we find out what happened in the end.

Swept Away has some wonderful songs, such as "Ain't No Man," and "Hard Worker," which highlight the fellow-feeling of the crew and how hard is to work a whaler, and the deeply religious "Lord Lay Your Head On My Shoulder" as a moment of calm before the storm. Later, we get "Satan Pulls the Strings," and the very lovely title song. These songs are so seamlessly laid into the show, you would never know it was a jukebox musical. Nothing feels shoehorned in or labored.

Time, thought, care, work, talent, and skill have been lavished on Swept Away, and it appeals to the senses: sight (Kevin Adams' golden lighting design); sound (music supervised by Brian Usifer; arranged and orchestrated by Usifer and Chris Miller).You can practically smell Susan Hilferty's gritty, shabby sailors' costumes. All that excellent work garners huge admiration and respect.

What it doesn't do is touch the heart. Self-sacrifice, yes; redemption, maybe. But of love, there is little, and an audience needs someone, or something, to love. That lack of love may keep Swept Away from the ranks of tourist-friendly Broadway musicals; there's no cuddly genie, no postmodern Shakespeare, not even a robot. If ya gotta have heart, sail on.

Swept Away

At the Longacre Theatre, 220 W 48th St.

Running time: 90 minutes, no intermission

Tickets: https://www.telecharge.com/Swept-Away-Tickets