My parents have been fans of The Avett Brothers for the majority of my life, so I grew up with their music playing in the house. Despite this, I didn’t warm up to their blend of rock and bluegrass until late high school when, inexplicably, “No Hard Feelings” and “January Wedding” became some of my favorite songs.
I was excited, then, when in 2024, articles about an Avett Brothers-helmed musical began circulating. The details were slow to emerge, and the cast album was even slower – not releasing until Feb. 7, 2025, over a month after the show closed on Broadway. However, with the story, cast and music now accessible, I felt I owed it to myself to explore my love of the band through their recent creative expedition.
“Swept Away” is risky for a Broadway musical.
First and foremost, it is a jukebox musical – meaning the songs are pre-existing and worked into a story retroactively, “Moulin Rouge” and “Mamma Mia” both fall into this category – the butt of many theater critic’s joke.
The style of music itself is a rarity – and risk– on Broadway. Typically, jukebox musicals rely on a discography of famous pop music to pull in a wide audience, whereas “Swept Away” happily leans into its bluegrass and folk niche. “Hadestown,” took similar risks in terms of musical style, but it still had a leg-up over “Swept Away” – runtime.
It’s no secret that Broadway tickets are expensive. People want to feel like they’re getting their money’s worth when they splurge to see a show on The Great White Way. “Swept Away,” is a one-act show, running roughly 90 minutes with no intermission. This is noticeably shorter than the standard two-and-a-half-hour runtime of other musicals. “Swept Away” was always going to face steep competition for money and audience members – I’m not surprised it didn’t have a long stint on Broadway.
Despite this, the plot intrigued me.
“Swept Away” is a story within a story. Beginning on the deathbed of a sailor solely referred to as ‘Mate’ (John Gallagher Jr. of “Spring Awakening” fame), “Swept Away” goes back in time to explore the events that have led Mate to his haunted existence. Mate narrates his journey from a brave sailor in the dying whaling industry to one of the only survivors of a shipwreck. Now seeking to reconcile with the choices he made to survive, Mate lays bare his sins in the hope that he can be forgiven – if not by the audience then by himself.
The Avett Brothers are well-suited to a story of this scale. Their music is deeply introspective and incisive in this story’s exploration of the inner-workings of a close group of comrades struggling to stay sane in the face of hardship.
Particularly atthe beginning of the show, the folksy roots of the music help characterize the men at the story’s heart – Mate, Little Brother (Adrian Blake Enscoe), Big Brother (Stark Sands), and Captain (Wayne Duvall). Through the down-home musical sound and the accessible lyrics, we come to understand the characters’ downtrodden existences and their desires to see more of the world.
The choice to go to sea makes sense. Wouldn’t we all choose this, as sharply observed in “Hard Worker (Part 2),” if our only other option was to work the earth until we are buried in it?
More than this, the ocean is perfectly personified, presented as the ideal woman/temptress/mistress to the lost and wary. In one of the show’s quiet moments, the musical’s title song functions as not only a ballad to the women left at port, but a ballad to the ocean herself. “You swept me away,” the sailors lament of their dual-loves.
However, the show takes this romantic idea and turns it into something more sinister after the boat’s wreck and the ensuing fight to survive, the music errs.
While the songs are good at capturing the high energy of adventure and the overconfidence of the men, the tunes are never sober enough to accurately convey the dire straits the characters find themselves in.
This is particularly noticeable during “Satan Pulls the Strings,” in which Mate argues cannibalism is necessary to ensure some of the crew survives. This is the lowest point of the show, yet the song is so driven by a rock-beat and angsty lyrics that it feels jarring. Here, Mate is confronting his own morality, but the music is almost juvenile – a child lashing out at authority.
It doesn’t do the story justice, and it certainly doesn’t do Mate – a wisened character – his deserved justice either.
Unfortunately, this dissonance lingers for the rest of the show, sitting heavily over the album’s standout performance, “No Hard Feelings.” Despite the perfection of the song’s delivery, the divide between story and delivery remains until the end.
The audience is left unsure if this musical is a celebratory or cautionary sea-shanty, as the opposed tones never combine into one uniform piece. Individually, the aspects of the narrative work, but more must be done to connect and cohere them so that they may all shine together.
However, even with these errors, I can’t help but imagine a successful life for this show on smaller stages.
Perhaps “Swept Away,” will find itself on the off-Broadway circuit, or become a love of local theaters seeking to experiment and stretch their wings.
Regardless, the possibility of the story going from average to mythical leaves me with hope that we may eventually be swept away by a revised and improved interpretation of this material.