Full disclosure: I like my musicals to lean dark, intelligent and biting. Sure, the sweetness of something like Maybe Happy Ending left me joyous, but I didn’t spend days thinking about it afterwards, like…Swept Away, currently sailing into an inconceivable kind of disaster each night at the Longacre Theater. Sure, it will definitely polarize audiences and critics, but it happens to be the best new musical of the first half of the 2024-25 season—certainly the most beguiling and original.
The show is based on the real-life tragedy on board a vessel knows as the Mignonette en route from Southampton (yes, where Titanic embarked) to Sydney in 1884 that sunk along Africa’s Cape of Good Hope. That ill-fated voyage inspired a 2004 album by the folk-rock group the Avett Brothers and their songs are used in the production. The book is by Tony-winner and Oscar-nominee John Logan (Red, Moulin Rouge The Musical) with direction by the eclectic Michael Mayer (Spring Awakening, American Idiot). This team have created an entirely new narrative where our seafarers are American whalers and depart from Massachusetts. The ship capsizes and the survivors must make a few unfathomable decisions.
The non-linear narrative bounces around from a hospital ward to the ship itself to the lifeboat where four men have survived including the Mate (John Gallagher, Jr.), the Captain (Wayne Duvall) who should have gone down with his vessel, a handsome Little Brother (Adrian Blake Enscoe) wishing to escape his hum-drum farm life and his Big Brother (Stark Sands), looking to bring his little brother home and getting stuck on the ship.
Much like on the Titanic, it’s the Captain’s final sea voyage. The Mate is the most feisty and pessimistic (realistic) of the quartet while the adventurous Little Brother admires and hero worships Mate. Big Brother is the voice of reason. Yes, stock characters but given tons of shadings.
The show’s first half deceivingly sets the stage for a gaggle of men who work together towards a goal on a body of water that has other plans for them. The second half is a startling jolt that completely alters the show’s tone, mood and direction. What happens, I will not give away, but the rousing work turns into something truly dark and horrifying.
There is a marvelous special effect when the ship capsizes that is a triumph of set, lighting and sound design.
The score is extraordinary. The songs are truly revealing, and, in a season where this word cannot be used too often, memorable. But also, quite intimate and heartfelt: “When my body won’t hold me anymore, And it finally lets me free, will I be ready?”
The ensemble does splendid work with Gallagher anchoring the show as the truly complex, lonely Mate. Sands dives into the role of good-hearted Big Brother and does some surprising things in the latter part of the show. But the most impressive turn is by newcomer Enscoe who has great boyish appeal, nuance and star-quality stage presence to spare. And although we repeatedly hear about his girl back home there is a definite attraction established between Little Brother and Mate, thanks to Enscoe and Gallagher’s subtle gestures and looks.
Swept Away is a riveting odyssey and if you can allow yourself to break free of genre-convention, you’re in for a thought provoking and sublime experience.
At the Longacre Theater (220 W. 48th Street)
Tickets: sweptawaymusical.com
