‘Swept Away’ review: Strange Broadway shipwreck show has pretty folk songs — and cannibalism

nypost.com:

90 minutes, with no intermission. At the Longacre Theatre, 220 W. 48th Street.Something I won’t be saying on my death bed: “I wish I would’ve watched more shows about boats.”Yet another crew of singing seafarers sets off in the Avett Brothers’ uneven “Swept Away,” which opened Tuesday night at the Longacre Theatre.

The musical adds a twisted new twist, through — cannibalism.On Broadway? Not so appetizing.A desperate meal of human flesh definitely does not pair well with the band’s pretty-to-ravishing folk songs from their 2004 album “Mignonette,” named for an 1800s English yacht, the passengers of which succumbed to the grotesque act after their ship sank and several were stranded aboard a lifeboat for three weeks.Before and after they nosh, they sing.

What else?At the show’s start, many years later, we meet Mate, a ripe-looking bearded fellow who is on his own deathbed pondering boats.

The tormented man, played by John Gallagher Jr. with a kooky Northeast accent that’s supposedly backwoods Vermont, is traumatized by the harrowing memories of his survival on the unforgiving ocean.