SWEPT AWAY
90 minutes, with no intermission. At the Longacre Theatre, 220 W. 48th Street.
Something I won’t be saying on my death bed: “I wish I would’ve watched more shows about boats.”
Yet another crew of singing seafarers sets off in the Avett Brothers’ uneven “Swept Away,” which opened Tuesday night at the Longacre Theatre. The musical adds a twisted new twist, through — cannibalism.
On Broadway? Not so appetizing.
A desperate meal of human flesh definitely does not pair well with the band’s pretty-to-ravishing folk songs from their 2004 album “Mignonette,” named for an 1800s English yacht, the passengers of which succumbed to the grotesque act after their ship sank and several were stranded aboard a lifeboat for three weeks.
Before and after they nosh, they sing. What else?
At the show’s start, many years later, we meet Mate, a ripe-looking bearded fellow who is on his own deathbed pondering boats. The tormented man, played by John Gallagher Jr. with a kooky Northeast accent that’s supposedly backwoods Vermont, is traumatized by the harrowing memories of his survival on the unforgiving ocean.
The green-lit ghosts of his three companions implore the weirdo to “fess up!” and finally tell their terrible story.
It’s a musical, so naturally he complies. The plot is far from based on a true story, by the way. The characters don’t have names, and the action has been shifted from a British charter to a still not exactly relatable American whaling expedition.
Rarely do I suggest that any show be longer than it already is, but 90 minutes is an awfully condensed span to go from boarding to blood-thirst.
In John Logan’s streamlined book, our four main characters have nary a second to expand beyond their basic descriptions, which are as follows:
Mate’s a boozehound scallawag, Captain (Wayne Duvall) is a dying breed of old-fashioned whaler, Little Brother (Adrian Blake Enscoe) is a lovesick optimist who wants to explore the world, and Brother (Stark Sands) is his deeply religious sibling who doesn’t.
The first few days, they grin and happily croon, “Yo ho!”-style. Dressed as Bushwick mixologists by costume designer Susan Hilferty, the sailors butt heads, too, but eventually accept each other. Sort of.
Little Brother longs for his girl back home, the only beating heart “Swept Away” narratively can claim.
Enscoe, with not much material to anchor to, nonetheless makes a stirring Broadway debut as the youngest member. He has a lovely, crystalline voice as he sings straight up to the twinkling stars, and radiates a star’s energy from the stage.
The rest, partly due to inhabiting world-weary characters, come off more jaded.
When their doomed vessel runs into a harsh storm, Rachel Hauck’s set of decks and masts capsizes in impressive fashion as winds whip the audience’s faces like a 4DX movie screening of “Avatar.”
The reveal — a drab wooden lifeboat — is an immediate letdown, though.
That bland rowboat is all there is to look at for the next 45 minutes. Director Michael Mayer spinning the floating object around and around isn’t enough to liven up the static image, especially after the similar “Life of Pi” was so visually astounding two seasons ago.
The second half of the show is impenetrably strange. The characters’ worsening situation doesn’t move or enthrall anybody as we await the gruesome inevitable.
As the sunbaked days go by, the boys grow weaker. But on Broadway, crippling hunger doesn’t stop ya from singing out. Enscoe’s number is sublime; Gallagher’s — uptempo and rock-ish — is Disney’s “Haunted Mansion.”
Then, in the last 20 minutes, when talk turns to who among them should be cooked for dinner, ticket-buyers start to reconsider that post-show reservation at Joe Allen. The liver there is absolutely delicious, but “Swept Away” will have you searching “vegan.”
