“Swept Away,” a darkly elegiac musical featuring the songs of the Avett Brothers, will end its Broadway run Dec. 15, less than a month after opening.
The musical, about a 19th-century shipwreck and its aftermath, explores the lengths to which human beings will go in order to survive. Although set in fictional circumstances, it is based on a real 19th-century tragedy that led to an important legal case in Britain.
“Swept Away” began previews Oct. 29 and opened Nov. 19 at the Longacre Theater. At the time of its closing it will have played 20 previews and 32 regular performances.
The show cost up to $14.5 million to capitalize, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, and that money has not been recouped. The weekly grosses were consistently well below what it cost to run, which is unsustainable.
“Swept Away” is the second new musical of this season to close shortly after opening, following “Tammy Faye,” at a time when new musicals face an ever-more-challenging path on Broadway.
The Avett Brothers have a devoted fan base, and “Swept Away” was praised by the New York Times’s chief theater critic, Jesse Green, who described it as “really about the gravest decisions humans can make, the depths of souls that are darker than the sea’s.”
But other reviews were mixed, and the musical, like the actual history that inspired it, includes cannibalism, which, although not featured prominently in marketing materials or press coverage, may have been a turnoff for some potential ticket buyers. Broadway is also packed with shows, many of which feature more familiar titles or performers, and “Swept Away” was unable to break through in that crowded marketplace.
Many of the show’s songs were featured on the Avett Brothers album “Mignonette,” and a cast recording is scheduled to be released in February. John Logan, the Tony-winning author of “Red,” wrote the musical’s book, and it was directed by Michael Mayer, a Tony winner for “Spring Awakening.”
The 90-minute show centers on four men stranded on a lifeboat — the only survivors of the shipwreck. They are played by John Gallagher Jr., a Tony winner for “Spring Awakening,” as well as Stark Sands (“Kinky Boots”), Adrian Blake Enscoe and Wayne Duvall.
The lead producers of “Swept Away” are Matthew Masten9y.cc casino, Sean Hudock and Madison Wells Live (founded by Gigi Pritzker). Before arriving on Broadway, the musical had runs at Berkeley Repertory Theater in California in 2022 and at Arena Stage in Washington in late 2023 and early 2024.