Paulanne Simmons
"Swept Away"
Tales of survival intrigue us. Perhaps because they bring out the best and worst in humanity. The story of The Mignonette is a fine example. On July 5, 1884, The Mignonette, a small yacht on its way from Southampton to its new owner in Australia, was sunk by a giant wave around 1,600 miles northwest of the Cape of Good Hope. The crew, captain Tom Dudley, Ned Brooks, mate Edwin Stephens and cabin boy Richard Parker, escaped in a 13-foot lifeboat and survived for twelve days on turnips, turtle meat, rainwater and urine. On the fifteenth day, Parker drank sea water and soon became sick. But before he could die, Stephens stood by, ready to hold Parker’s legs as Dudley drove his penknife into his jugular. The blood and flesh were distributed and eaten by everyone. A few days later, the survivors were picked up by a German vessel, The Moctezuma, and taken to Falmouth, back in England. Despite favorable public opinion, the men were arrested, and after a messy trial, Dudley and Stephens were convicted of murder by a panel of five judges and sentenced to six months incarceration. The grisly story lived on as a standard legal case taught to law students in the US and the UK, a Monty Python Sketch entitled “Lifeboat (Cannibalism)/Still No Sign of Land,” the shipwrecked Bengal Tiger named Richard Parker in Yann Marell’s Life of Pi and the album, Mignonette, by the folk/rock band, The Avett Brothers. Then in 2022, "Swept Away", a musical based on the album, made its premiere at the Berkeley Repertory Theare. And now "Swept Away" has anchored at Broadway’s Longacre Theatre. The book, by John Logan, differs in many ways from the original story. The ship is a whaler sailing from New Bedford. It carries a large crew, and of the four survivors two are brothers, identified as Little Brother (Adrian Blake Enscoe) and Big Brother (Stark Sands). The other two men on the boat are the Captain (Wayne Duvall) and the Mate (John Gallagher, Jr.) The lack of individual names is indicative of the generic quality that plagues the production. Little Brother is a naïve teenager who wants to see the world. Big Brother is a God-fearing man who wants to save him from it. The Captain and the Mate are both experienced seamen, but the Captain proves ineffectual, and the Mate quickly turns vicious. The production is directed by Michael Mayer and features a large
ensemble that, along with the principals, sings The Avett Brothers’
songs and executes David Neumann’s choreography admirably.
The show is riveting before the disaster. And watching Rachel Hauck’s
set transition from the whaler into its capsized remains looming
over the small lifeboat is exhilarating. But soon the show gets
swamped. Whether or not to kill a man is certainly a dramatic decision, but as none of the men has much of a personality, it’s hard to care too much about their fate. The Avett Brothers have some great songs, but in the last third of the show they begin to blend into each other. "Swept Away" also ends very differently than the source material. We certainly never see the sailors gobbling up their shipmate. But such a revolting ending would not serve the new meaning Logan has given to the story. "Swept Away" is more than anything a parable about evil, sacrifice and redemption. Its creators were reaching for biblical proportions, but they forgot that even in the Bible people had names.
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