{"id":28616,"date":"2024-12-20T05:30:21","date_gmt":"2024-12-20T10:30:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=28616"},"modified":"2024-11-25T11:53:26","modified_gmt":"2024-11-25T16:53:26","slug":"the-avett-brothers-and-swept-away-banjos-on-broadway-or-quite-a-concept-to-digest-part-2-of-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2024\/12\/20\/the-avett-brothers-and-swept-away-banjos-on-broadway-or-quite-a-concept-to-digest-part-2-of-2\/","title":{"rendered":"The Avett Brothers and \u2018Swept Away\u2019 \u2013 Banjos on Broadway or, Quite a Concept to Digest (Part 2 of 2)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Continued from Part One<\/a>…<\/i><\/p>\n

In Logan\u2019s hands, Swept Away<\/i> is a morality tale with religious (or quasi-religious) themes of salvation at its core. \u201cWe were [pleasantly] surprised at how on-the-mark John was about concepts that are very alive in our own dialogue,\u201d says Seth. \u201cThe brotherhood\u2014the relational nuances\u2014are spot-on,\u201d Scott adds.<\/p>\n

The 90-minute production is split roughly in half; the first part features the four main characters (each referred to in generic terms\u2014Big Brother, Little Brother, Captain, Mate\u2014rather than by name) plus a spirited ensemble of crew members aboard a whaling boat that sets sail from New Bedford, Massachusetts. The music hews fairly closely to the Avett Brothers\u2019 original arrangements, with lyrical and instrumental adjustments made to accommodate the vocal-forward nature of a stage production.<\/p>\n

Occasionally, the songs take an anachronistic turn. With its back-and-forth shift between bluegrass and rock, \u201cAin\u2019t No Man \/ Lord Lay Your Hand\u201d recalls the Charlie Daniels Band\u2019s similarly-themed 1979 single \u201cThe Devil Went Down to Georgia.\u201d But largely, the music remains true to the spirit of a story set nearly 150 years ago.<\/p>\n

Swept Away<\/i> premiered in 2022 with performances in Berkeley, California; since then the show has traveled to Washington, D.C., with no changes to the cast\u2019s core lineup. Actor-singer Stark Sands (Big Brother) notes that the cast has mounted 128 productions. \u201cAnd that was before we started on Broadway,\u201d he adds. Three weeks of preview performances for the seasoned cast came ahead of Swept Away<\/i>\u2019s Broadway premiere on November 19 at Manhattan\u2019s Longacre Theatre.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Bob Crawford suggests that the show\u2019s inventive set is almost a fifth main character. \u201cIt speaks with incredible boldness,\u201d he says. (Details on what he means are best discovered when seeing the performance.) But beyond the scenery and the Avett Brothers\u2019 rousing music, the true stars of the show are the four actor-singers leading the all-male cast. Wayne Duvall (Captain) develops his role beyond what Logan\u2019s book provides for it. \u201cMy character goes from melancholy to despair to death,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s a deep<\/i> freakin\u2019 show, man. It tackles so many different [topics] for each one of us, separately and together.\u201d<\/p>\n

John Gallagher Jr.\u2019s Mate is the lead among equals in Swept Away<\/i>. \u201cIt\u2019s quite vocally demanding,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd it takes a real emotional toll to live through [the story] eight times a week.\u201d Sands emphasizes that all of the major roles\u2014his included\u2014require the actors to \u201cgo to some really dark places mentally, but there\u2019s redemption. We get lifted up at the end of the show.\u201d<\/p>\n

Adrian Enscoe (Little Brother) admits that \u201cwhat happens in the show is quite traumatic, but it leaves you with a sense of hope.\u201d Enscoe laughs while explaining that there are other theater works that seek to disturb the audience. \u201cYou go home, your stomach is turning: \u2018What the hell did I just see!?\u2019\u201d The actor says that Swept Away<\/i> is different. \u201cThe show puts you through a catharsis,\u201d Enscoe concedes. \u201cWhen people come out afterward, it\u2019s like they\u2019ve just had a religious experience. And that\u2019s how it feels for us on stage, too.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The expert staging and inventive set work serve to add to the emotional intensity of the story adapted from the Avett Brothers\u2019 adaptation of a real-life tragedy. But the tale twice removed still holds great power. \u201cI want people to be in that little boat with us,\u201d says Duvall. \u201cI want them to forget that they\u2019re sitting in a theater, and to come away with whatever they truly need or feel.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re all in this together,\u201d says Adrian Enscoe, referring as much to the cast as to humanity as a whole. \u201cThe poetry of being on this boat fits into the larger world: you never know what adversity is around the corner. The only thing that we have in this world is each other; we have to rely on each other existentially to pull through our darkest moments.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gallagher observes that any theater staging is a leap of faith. \u201cAnd that\u2019s true for each of our characters,\u201d he says. \u201cThere\u2019s a massive leap of faith that everyone has to take at some point in the show. You just hope you\u2019ll land somewhere soft. And my hope is that every audience member takes the same risk: to jump as if they\u2019ll be caught.\u201d \u201cMy wish,\u201d says Sands, \u201cis that people would walk away from the show with an appreciation for their own lives, for the people that they love. And I think Swept Away<\/i> has the ability to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Avett Brothers are pleased with how Swept Away<\/i> has taken on a life of its own beyond their music. \u201cI love how high the highs get, how low the lows get,\u201d Scott Avett says. \u201cThere\u2019s a great element of dynamism in Swept Away<\/i>; that\u2019s something that we\u2019re attempting in our own shows\u2014and in our everyday lives\u2014as well.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Continued from Part One… In Logan\u2019s hands, Swept Away is a morality tale with religious (or quasi-religious) themes of salvation at its core. \u201cWe were [pleasantly] surprised at how on-the-mark […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":28618,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,41,44],"tags":[5573,5574],"class_list":["post-28616","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-americana","category-interview","category-live-shows","tag-avett-brothers","tag-swept-away","cat-6-id","cat-41-id","cat-44-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28616","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28616"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28616\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28622,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28616\/revisions\/28622"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28618"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28616"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28616"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28616"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}