THE SEA, THE SEA

A story of survival on a whaling ship sets sail on Broadway. Robert Sullivan meets the crew behind the rousing folk musical Swept Away.

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The cast of Swept Away, the about to-open Broadway musical that follows four whalers on an odyssey of survival and salvation, are a tight crew. They first came together over several COVID-interrupted workshops then toured the musical through regional theaters—Berkeley in 2022, then a year later at the Arena Stage in Washington, DC. Along the way they’d often find themselves imagining how they would fare on a whaling ship, and how they’d face what their characters face. “Discussions in the rehearsal room,” says John Gallagher Jr., “about, you know, what would you do….”

Gallagher plays the first mate on a ship that leaves New Bedford, Massachusetts, sometime around 1888, and as he speaks, he is sitting down for coffee not far from the calm waters of New York Harbor, the sun shining, the faint smell of salt air just beyond our espressos. With him is Wayne Duvall, who plays the ship’s captain, and Stark Sands, playing one of two brothers in the musical, each at sea for the first time. “You go to your imagination about what are the choices you would make,” Duvall says.

“And Stark,” Gallagher adds, “is a very practical human being.” He’s nodding toward his old friend: Sands and Gallagher first met in 2007 and were both cast, a couple of years later, in American Idiot, the Broadway musical based on the music of Green Day. Swept Away is a musical based on the music of the Avett Brothers, the North Carolina–based folk-rock band, and in particular, their 2004 album,