Why Avett Brothers Musical ‘Swept Away’ Failed on Broadway

For Scott Avett, the dangerous information arrived with dinner. In early December, the co-founder of the Avett Brothers and his spouse had been of their favourite eating place in Charlotte, North Carolina. Only a few weeks previous, Swept Away — a musical in line with an early Avett Brothers album that incorporated all its songs in conjunction with others from the Americana band’s catalog — had opened on Broadway. The maître d on the position advised Avett that she and her sister couldn’t wait to look it. As soon as Avett took a seat at his desk, a fan came to visit and stated he could be trekking to New York that weekend to catch the display.  

However as he was once listening to all that certain comments, Avett won the textual content he’d been dreading: Swept Away could be last, after most effective 32 performances. In that second, Avett needed to stay the dangerous information underneath wraps, however inside of his middle plunged. “I sought after the sector to look and listen to it,” he says. “And I’m simply sitting there considering, ‘This in point of fact sucks.’ I had assumed it was once going to be on Broadway for twenty years.”

The whole lot about Swept Away defied Broadway conference. The forged didn’t come with any primary film or TV actors. The display was once neither in line with a vintage movie nor was once a standard jukebox musical constructed across the songs of a well-known pop superstar or band. As an alternative, it was once impressed through the Avett Brothers’ 2004 album Mignonette, in line with the real-life story of the sinking of a crusing vessel headed from England to Sydney, Australia, in 1884. Caught in a lifeboat for almost 3 weeks, the 4 survivors in the long run resorted to devouring certainly one of their boatmates with the intention to continue to exist.

However Swept Away had an equivalent selection of components in its nook, which incorporated the Avett Brothers’ hardcore following and the involvement of skills like director Michael Mayer, who helmed Spring Awakening and the Broadway model of American Fool. It tapped into the tradition’s tasty on-again, off-again fascination with cannibalism (Yellowjackets, “Timothy” nostalgia). And similar to Lady from the North Nation, the musical primarily based round acquainted and unfamiliar songs from the Bob Dylan catalog, Swept Away was once additionally noticed as a possible harbinger of a brand new Broadway, one that might incorporate trendy story-songs slightly than same old showtunes.

“Having grown up going to concert events and being partial to singer-songwriters, I’ve all the time been desirous about the theory of intersecting the concert-going tradition with the theater-going tradition,” says co-producer Sean Hudock. “And I assumed this was once a possibility to take the ones youth goals of short of to paintings with rock stars and bringing them into our global and seeing the crossover in audiences. We can have other people who had by no means noticed a musical or had by no means been to the theater sooner than who had been coming for the primary time and being kind of blown away through this theatrical gesture.”

However finally, Swept Away was once blown away through one thing else: Middling price ticket gross sales, a tale that can were unappetizing to a couple, a track catalog unfamiliar to the vacationers who make up a big chew of Broadway’s target audience, and most likely a little bit of dangerous timing relating to the nationwide temper. “It might be worse, however running on a challenge for 11 years after which last a lot previous than you ever expected, it hurts,” Matthew Masten, a co-producer, says. “It’s a difficult, difficult tablet to swallow.”

It was once Masten who initiated the challenge all the ones years in the past. Studying a piece of writing about idea albums that would doubtlessly be the root of musicals, the manufacturer was once specifically interested by the point out of Mignonette. “I used to be serious about the theory of being stranded at sea, and what would you do?” he says. “How a ways would you be keen to visit save your members of the family? I couldn’t get that out of my head. A part of the intrigue after I heard this idea was once, are you able to make a darker musical?” Masten was once additionally partial to Sweeney Todd, the proudly ugly musical a few murderous barber.

Even if he was once in large part ignorant of the Avett Brothers and their track, Masten was a fan and approached their group, who gave the go-ahead, and paintings started on reworking the album right into a musical. Through 2018, the manufacturers additionally enlisted playwright and screenwriter John Logan (Gladiator, Skyfall, movie model of Sweeney Todd and Tony-winning play Crimson). The display tweaked one of the vital main points of the particular incident — the send was once now an American one out of Massachusetts — but it surely nonetheless dwelled at the thought of other folks being pressured to make an unsavory selection about the right way to continue to exist, entire with a little bit of blood onstage (however no precise devouring of flesh).

At Avett’s house in North Carolina, Logan learn the script to the musician. Because the songs at the album had been extra elliptical than explicit — they don’t actually spell out the main points of the tale — Avett was once shocked, particularly on the special approach (who survives and who doesn’t) on the finish of the display. “After I heard that twist, that was once it,” he says. “It was once so intense and so proper, and so excellent and stated such a lot about loving any person else and self-sacrifice. Oh, my God, that was once it.”  

Any other manufacturer, Gigi Pritzker, had labored on Crimson Roses, Inexperienced Gold, the 2017 Off-Broadway musical constructed across the songs of the Thankful Useless, and likewise on Million Greenback Quartet, the musical a few 1956 jam involving Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins, Johnny Money, and Jerry Lee Lewis. “Having had that have, I used to be like, ‘K, you’ll be able to take track that might not be Broadway track and dance, and it might not be a Broadway construction of songs that growth the tale line,’” Pritzker says. “However I assumed, ‘That is very possible.’ Swept Away is technically a jukebox musical, but it surely doesn’t really feel like a jukebox musical.” Tune arrangers Chris Miller and Brian Usifer adhered to a small unplugged folks band offstage, in what Usifer calls a quest for “a cohesive piece slightly than a number of songs.”

Even if some traders had been cautious (and snobbery towards jukebox musicals nonetheless lingered), Swept Away controlled to lift $14.5 million from traders. However it confronted one hurdle in an instant: Swept Away was once first scheduled to workshop on the Berkeley Repertory Theater in California in 2020, however the pandemic killed the ones plans. The display in the end opened there later that yr, adopted through a run in Washington, D.C., in past due 2023. Its Broadway debut was once penciled in for November 2024. Through then, the staging — particularly a scene-seating capsizing of the boat, which makes room for the lifeboat — was once in position, and the ugly denouement additionally remained. “We had been advised [the show] was once other and there have been demanding situations,” says Avett. “But if I take into accounts motion pictures, it sort of feels like that [savagery] would play simply on movie. No longer simply, but it surely performs, and other folks would display up for it. God, they cross and watch Terrifier or no matter. They’re keen.”

Avett additionally felt the musical’s message would conquer any queasiness when possible shoppers heard the storyline. “I imagine everyone pertains to this display,” he says. “The darkish hope within the display is everyone’s to stand in their very own manner, with partnership, circle of relatives, and your personal salvation. I believe it was once for everyone, and I used to be hoping everyone would see it on Broadway.”

After previews, Swept Away opened on the Longacre Theater on Nov. 19. For the primary few weeks the venue was once stuffed to 80 precent capability, with the highest-priced tickets at $248. However to stay the display going, Swept Away must make extra every week and trap in non-Avett fanatics, which proved difficult. “We knew it was once one thing that might take time to catch on,” says Masten. “The primary week or two was once full of numerous Avett Brothers fanatics, however we felt just like the theater neighborhood itself could be a little bit of a more difficult promote, particularly while you’re in a fall season with Sundown Street, Gypsy and those titles that individuals know.”

In its evaluate, the New York Instances referred to as it “a number of the darkest, maximum unsparing musicals ever to anchor itself on Broadway” but additionally famous, “You might however wish to ask your self whether or not a display whose sound results come with amplified vomit is best for you.” Catching one of the vital performances himself, Avett (who, like the opposite band individuals, was once now not within the display itself) stored a watchful eye at the second when some of the characters sacrifices himself, over his brother, in order that the others can reside. “No person [in the audience] knew how the play was once going to maintain, this catch 22 situation,” Avett says. “Particularly while you notice any person’s flesh has to feed this boat, you are feeling the stress get started. I heard other folks grunt or moan. We heard that a few other folks handed out or fainted or got here on the subject of fainting. Other people left, other folks gasped and, and I believe there have been some yells. It was once intense.”

The display didn’t revel in a large bump right through Thanksgiving week, which ceaselessly occurs with Broadway fare, and most effective part the tickets had been bought the week finishing Dec. 1. And given the prime value of keeping up a Broadway display, its days had been numbered. The truth that it opened proper across the time of a deeply polarizing and onerous presidential election would possibly not have helped both. “It’s sophisticated subject matter,” says Masten. “It makes you’re employed, it makes you assume, it makes you are feeling. We’re in a sophisticated time. Perhaps once in a while other folks don’t wish to really feel that a lot. We had been going to wish to run for some time to get phrase of mouth, to get other folks to know what the display is. And sadly, we simply weren’t seeing the price ticket gross sales building up on the price we wanted them to.”

In the end, on Dec. 5, the display’s last went public. At the heels of the inside track, price ticket gross sales surged — now not ordinary when a display’s finale is introduced — and the run was once prolonged two extra weeks, in the end wrapping up on Dec. 29 after a grand general of 48 performances and an unprofitable gross of $4.5 million. Mockingly, its final week was once its perfect grossing. “To look the outpouring of enhance and that final week of complete properties advised me there’s nonetheless a spot for a display like this,” says Masten. “Perhaps the timing wasn’t proper, or possibly there are issues that wish to be performed in a different way, however there’s passion. That’s made the closure of the display, no less than for me, much more bearable.” 

Those that labored at the display stay in a little bit of shell surprise. Pritzker admits to “moments crying in my room.” Provides Hudock, “I’ve implausible pleasure at having been part of one thing like this. All of us took a large likelihood, and in the event you’re now not taking giant possibilities, what are you doing? The item I simply stay reminding myself is that we were given a display to Broadway, and now not each and every display, particularly a display that’s artistically dangerous and difficult, makes it to Broadway. And that, for me, is the saving grace of any of the ones depressive moments that definitely do come.”

When he himself isn’t bummed out, Scott Avett (who flew to New York to be with the solid and team right through its ultimate week) stays philosophical. “The display forces the viewer to maintain the form in their soul on the finish in their lifestyles,” he says. “It items that catch 22 situation, and that’s now not precisely what everyone desires to maintain on the matinee within the afternoon! You’re short of to look Depraved or a type of different fabulous displays. This display is speaking about God in an excessively genuine, intentional manner. And now not numerous American citizens are essentially signing up to try this, excluding in explicit situations.”

The Swept Away creators also are heartened through the discharge of the display’s authentic solid album subsequent month and the concept that, in a single shape or some other, the display will live to tell the tale, whether or not thru its songs or a long run revival. In a second of levity, Hudock provides, “However we can now not be happening a cruise send.”