The small boat containing the four actors swiveled listlessly, this way and that, in the closing minutes of a recent performance of Swept Away (Longacre Theatre, booking to May 25, 2025).
We knew—thanks to this Broadway musical’s prologue—that out of Mate (John Gallagher Jr.), Big Brother (Stark Sands), Little Brother (Adrian Blake Enscoe), and Captain (Wayne Duvall), only Gallagher Jr.’s character survived. Whatever preceded the deaths of the others was murky and mysterious—their unquiet spirits beseeched Mate to tell the truth and their story.
In this 90-minute show, directed by Michael Mayer, the folk-rock score of the Avett Brothers is a rich pleasure (and sung beautifully by a talented cast, particularly its four principals). However, the story (by John Logan) and staging of the ill-fated sailors—on board a whaling ship that leaves New Bedford, Massachusetts, sometime around 1888—creaks a little more ominously.
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The design of Swept Away is static and leaden; we face the deck of a boat for one part of the show, then its upturned hull and the little rescue boat for the final bit. It feels visually unimaginative and atmospherically airless.
The plot also feels stuck: first, Little Brother and Big Brother are at war around the former going to sea; Little Bro wants adventure, while Big Bro is a God-fearing stick-in-the-mud who wants his younger sibling to remain on land and live out a conventional life. Whaling itself is in danger as an industry—various clocks be doomfully ticking.
Big Brother also objects strongly to what he sees as Mate’s sinful loucheness, precisely the kind of thing his younger brother might find appealing; indeed, the musical, particularly in a display of tenderness at the very end, seems to hint at a deeper connection between Mate and Little Brother, but doesn’t explore this fully.
Both brothers eventually set sail. A deadly storm erupts—keep jackets or a cardigan handy, puffs of cold wind blow on your faces!—and the boat capsizes. This special effect is neatly pulled off, but also a letdown, especially with the bulky shadow of the upturned boat still looming above the men in their rescue boat for the rest of the show. It’s a design vibe-suck.
Their lives imperiled, Mate suggests a bloody solution to help keep the survivors alive and hunger sated—that suggestion, and what happens next brings Sweeney Todd to the high seas.
The Avett Brothers’ music is glorious, but the show feels too becalmed and dull around their lovely, if repetitive, score. The best sequence, and the one our audience applauded most loudly, was “Ain’t No Man,” a stomping, full-throated company number (choreography by David Neumann) featuring all the company letting rip in song and dance on deck.
Most of the other songs are slower, more meditative, as Little Brother considers his love, Melody Ann; then the men, after being swept away—all their fellows dead—mull their own fates; and finally Mate chews over his guilt for his bloody solution to staying alive (props to Gallagher Jr. for staying in such convincing mental turmoil for as long as the show demands).
Swept Away never does go full Sweeney Todd; it teases its horrors, then turns away from showing them. That fits with the show’s own subtlety and angsty tone, but it needs some kind of added pep—perhaps a few more hi-ho-m’hearties company numbers and general brightness—before the clouds of doom, despond, and bloody nightmares descend. Still, if you want to listen to the Avett Brothers at their tuneful best, go set sail.
