'Swept Away' is compelling theatre

  

It makes me sad that all the talent, creativity and hard work behind Swept Away, the new musical at the Longacre Theatre, wasn’t rewarded with the healthy run it deserves.  It’s one of the best shows I’ve seen in this fall season that has offered the best shows of any fall season I can remember. 

It’s no wonder we get such a steady stream of formulaic jukebox musicals, the latest of which is this fall’s A Wonderful World, Louis Armstrong’s hits sung with spirit by James Monroe Iglehart in an otherwise mediocre show.  Originality is risky on Broadway.

Nothing is mediocre in director Michael Mayer’s Swept Away, a riveting 90-minute intermission-less story, perfectly scripted by John Logan.  It’s adapted from The Avett Brothers 2004 album “Mignonette,” which drew its inspiration from the shipwreck of a British vessel of that name that sank in 1884. The performances are award-worthy and the music is the best of the season.  It’s unfortunate that this show opened at a time when all of the 41 Broadway houses were full.  Too much competition, I guess, and no big name TV or movie stars to lure the tourists. 

Let’s start with the cast.  John Gallagher, Jr. (second from left in photo), Stark Sands (second from right), Adrian Blake Enscoe (right) and Wayne Duvall are the leads, backed by a strong ensemble of singer/dancers.  Choreographer David Neumann brings them together for lively numbers that, if we weren’t in a Broadway theatre, would have had us on our feet clapping and stomping our feet right along with them.  At least in the first half of the show.

That brings us to the Avett Brothers’ music, a blend of folk, country and Americana, music I love.  I listen to this kind of music for five hours on Sundays when I’m home — “Mountain Stage” from noon to 2 p.m. and “Common Threads” from 2 to 5 p.m. on WAER from Syracuse University.  I love standard Broadway fare — I wouldn’t be doing what I do if I didn’t — but I also love my Sunday country/folk music and I rarely get to hear it live in NYC.  The Swept Away band is fantastic under the direction of Will Van Dyke, with supervision, arrangements and orchestrations by Brian Usifer. 

As far as theatricality goes, you would have to go far to match the drama of the whaling ship’s capsizing and the four survivors’ transition into a lifeboat.  Neumann, scenic designer Rachel Hauck, lighting designer Kevin Adams and sound designer John Shivers work together for effects that are spectacular.

We’re introduced to the characters on the dock at New Bedford, MA, in 1888.  They are both individuals and archetypes.  Mate (Gallagher) was well educated but has become a wastrel and cynic.  Captain (Duvall) has a wife and children whom he has rarely seen since he has spent his life at sea.  This is to be the ship’s last voyage because kerosene and other products have replaced the need for whale oil. The 300-ton ship will then become scrap metal and Captain feels he might as well join it.  Little Brother (Enscoe) is in his late teens and is a classic innocent in search of adventure.  He loves his girlfriend and wants to marry her but escapes the farm to see the world first.  Big Brother (Sands) is a deeply religious Christian content with his life of farm and church who comes to bring his brother home but ends up heading out to sea as the ship sails with him still onboard.

All is lighthearted before setting sail as the cast fills the stage to sing a couple rousing numbers conveying their excitement.  “I’m a hard, hard worker everyday” and “Nothing’s going to change my mind” are fun and engaging.  But after all are dramatically swept away and only the survivors are left in a lifeboat, desperation builds.  After three weeks without a drop of water or bite of food and a scorching sun blazing down on them the conversation turns to ethical, moral and spiritual questions of what a person can do to survive. The climax is shocking in its speed. I left grateful for an afternoon of such compelling theatre and regretting that it was closing at the end of the month.

Swept Away began previews Nov. 14, opened Nov. 19 and its closing was announced for Dec. 15 until an unprecedented demand for tickets followed the closing announcement.  It was extended until Dec. 29.

I don’t know what the future will be for Swept Away.  I can’t imagine it going on a national tour.  Not after its short run and with its dark subject matter.  I do hope regional theatres will pick it up.  The capsizing will have to be scaled back but the show did begin in regional theatres, Berkeley Repertory followed by Arena Stage, and showed enough promise that it was moved to Broadway.  I would be happy to go see it again. 

Broadway actress Maryann Plunkett brings to life the sadness and joy of Alzheimer's

Backstage Conversation with The Notebook Star Maryann Plunkett

The black and white photo on the dressing room mirror is of a woman, shot from behind, looking out a window at a snow-covered yard, with the backs of two little stuffed animals on the windowsill beside her. It evokes a sense of tranquility and timelessness. For the owner of this photo, Tony Award-winning actress Maryann Plunkett, it represents the presence of her mother in a tiny nook in a large Broadway theatre. 

Plunkett’s mother is present to her as well in the much grander space of the stage at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre where the 72-year-old actress is starring as Older Allie in The Notebook, the musical based on the best-selling novel by Nicholas Sparks, which became a movie starring Rachel McAdams and Ryan Gosling.

“I try to enter the world she lived.” That world is dementia. Plunkett’s mother died at 91 after living with the condition for many years. Allie is played by three different actresses, representing youth, early adult life and elderly with Alzheimer’s. The story at all levels is about the love between Allie and Noah. It’s captured in a notebook Allie wrote in those earlier stages, and it’s what Noah reads to her after she no longer knows him, in the hopes that the times portrayed may break through to her.

For large parts of the show Allie and Older Noah, played by Dorian Harewood, sit to the side of the stage while the young and early adulthood couples play out the memories Noah is sharing. Plunkett is intensely in character the entire time as Allie tries to understand this story that is her life. 

Plunkett, who received a Tony nomination for her portrayal of Older Allie, was drawn to the show by Bekah Brunstetter’s book and Ingrid Michaelson’s music and lyrics, as well as the story, which she can relate to her mother’s experience.

“I was clearly drawn to that. Allie’s an artist and my mom was a musician and she liked to doodle,” she says, pretending to draw on a book on her vanity table. “It’s the creative force in a person. I think the script and music and lyrics are so spare and so deep. It makes me honest. I really feel it.”

While Harewood is only pretending to be speaking the notebook’s words, Plunkett stays in character by watching the younger actors. She imagines Allie’s reaction.

“I’m (Allie) hearing a story. What am I seeing? I’m seeing parts of me that I don’t know.”

She said her mother was often looking for something and was afraid she would run out of money so the family kept a wallet in a drawer in the buffet with 20 one dollar bills in it. The denomination didn’t matter. Her mother felt secure counting all those bills.

“I brought a couple of moments like that. I try to enter the world she lived.”

Plunkett’s father, who died three and a half years before her mother, is also present at the Schoenfeld. Beside the photo of her mother, Plunkett has written on a small piece of paper the Latin expression Ab initio, meaning in beginning or from the beginning. This is how he signed all his cards to her mother.

Plunkett shared caregiving with her father and four siblings, going to Massachusetts from New York once a month for a week or four days twice a month. In the final years caregivers and nurses assisted.

 “There was also joy in the years with my Mother.  She had a curiosity and a seeking.  As sung in The Notebook, ‘the sadness and the joy'.”

Besides this personal element of the show, Plunkett appreciates that the older couple, which is the one making audiences cry the most, is portrayed seriously and not for laughs or sentimentality as is so often the case with older characters. Both she and Harewood have had long marriages. She and her husband, actor Jay O. Sanders, celebrated their 33rd anniversary Oct. 1.

Plunkett says she is frequently met at the stage door by people sharing their stories of a spouse or parent who had Alzheimer's. Twice someone has told her they’ve just been diagnosed with the condition. One of them said the show had given him hope that he might have a spark of memory as Allie does at the show’s end.

The musical, which played Chicago before beginning performance in New York in February, is ending Dec.15. It will begin a national tour in Cleveland in September.

Asked what she would tell her mother now about her understanding of the experience of living with dementia, she pauses and her eyes fill with tears.

“I’m getting emotional. Simply, ‘thank you.’ It’s been a joy being with her again.”