Avett Brothers Make a New Classic
With a prolific stage director like Bartlett Sher, you generally know what you’re going to get whether he’s working on Broadway or the Met Opera. With a director like Michael Mayer, it’s anyone’s guess what going to end up on stage. He has brought a classic like “Spring Awakening” to Broadway and a genuine mess like “A Beautiful Noise” or “On a Clear Day.” At the Met, his work is also variable. One season he directs the tepid “Marnie,” another year, its a revelatory “Rigoletto,” set in 1950s Las Vegas.
The good news is that Mayer is in top form with his latest Broadway entry. The new musical “Swept Away” opened Tuesday at the Longacre Theatre, and it helps immeasurably that this divisive director is working with great material here. In its first half, the musical recalls the grandeur of Benjamin Britten’s opera “Billy Budd.” Then Rachel Hauck’s set capsizes – the ship really flips over! – and the musical turns into an intimate chamber piece with its four survivors starving and slowly spinning around in the middle of the sea.
John Logan wrote the original book, and what happens in this 105-minute one-act musical is far more harrowing than anything Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall thought up for Captain Bligh and other survivors of that famous mutiny, in “Men Against the Sea,” the second novel in their Bounty Trilogy. Logan won a Tony for his play “Red” and has been nominated for three Oscars: “Gladiator,” “The Aviator” and “Hugo.” His work on “Swept Away” belongs at the top of that impressive list of accomplishments. In an attempt to avoid spoilers, this review will have to leave it there except to say that the finale is as big a surprise as what Cole Escola pulls off in “Oh, Mary!” regarding the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. The difference is, where Escola produces shock waves of laughter, Logan simply shocks.
“Swept Away” is an awesomely different and totally unexpected Broadway musical. It comes from the Avett Brothers’ 2004 album, “Mignonette,” based on the true story of a shipwreck in 1880. Adrian Blake Enscoe, in a spectacular Broadway debut, gets to sing the score’s most affecting ballads, his sweet tenor a perfect fit for these folk-country tunes. John Shiver’s subtle sound design lets us hear every word of the touching lyrics. Enscoe plays Little Brother to Stark Sands’ Big Brother, who is something of a prig — until he isn’t. Sands takes the back seat on the boat, playing the least colorful character of the four men who survive. It’s a slow-burn performance. Sands admirably holds back to deliver Logan’s big shocker in magnificent form.
Wayne Duvall is the craggy Captain and John Gallagher Jr. rounds out the quartet, playing the Mate, the outspoken naysayer of the group who gets to sing the score’s one foray into hard rock. It’s the song “Satan Pulls the Strings,” and Gallagher does precisely that. He’s an actor who flips back and forth between work in plays and musicals, and he uses all those dramatic skills to ground a show that will blow you away.
