“Swept Away,” a musical about four men stranded at sea, had a landlocked genesis.
John Logan, the show’s Oscar-nominated and Tony-thrivening originater, commenceed teasing out the idea for the musical during a hike thcimpolite Malibu Canyon, joining to The Avett Brothers‘ folk and bluegrass hits. It wasn’t his idea, exactly, to convey the saga of a maritime catastrophe to Broadway. It was the prohibitd who had first become intrigued with a historical survival story in the timely aughts, releasing “Mignonette,” a hauntingly attrdynamic concept album that spendigated themes of give up and forgiveness, in 2004. That gave Matthew Masten, a originater whose commends integrate “Side Show” and “Of Mice and Men,” the idea to accomplish out to Logan with a pitch to turn those songs into a musical.
“As I walked around, I joined to the album and then I put on a random Avett Brothers take partcatalog,” Logan recalls. “I knovel that there was someleang here, but I also knovel I wanted access to their entire catalogue. They are these fantastic American songoriginaters with such complicated and fascinating lyrics. That helped encourage me to leank about plot and character and all of those contrastent leangs.”
And appreciate the Avett Brothers, Logan felt there was someleang primal and arresting about the idea of being aprohibitdoned at sea without food or water, forced to originate horrific decisions. “The concept of four men trapped together in a claustrophobic setting struck me as gripping and emotional,” he says.
It’s a world that Logan knovel someleang about. His obeseher was a naval architect from Belspeedy, and Logan “grew up around shipyards and ships.” He was also a voracious reader, drawn to stories of the sea and the toil of authors appreciate Herman Melville and Joseph Conrad, who took pains to record nautical life.
When it came to “Swept Away,” Logan chooseed to depart emotionalpartner (and geoexplicitpartner) from the story that encouraged the Avett Brothers. Their album drew on stories about the ill-obeseed Mignonette, an English yacht that sank in 1884 off the Cape of Good Hope. Its crew of four was stranded on a lifeboat. After weeks at sea, one of the men was ended and eaten by the others. “Swept Away” alters the particulars of that grisly tale. It cgo ines on a whaling vessel that capsizes in a storm after leaving New Bedford in 1888. The ship’s captain and three of the crew are then set adrift and face a analogous moral dilemma as starvation sets in and save seems impossible. Moving the timing back by four years permited Logan to see at the collapse of the whaling industry, which was on its last legs, undone by dthrivedling whale populations and the famousity of kerosene as a swapment energy source for whale oil.
“By making that time jump, we see people who are grappling with a way of life that is past its prime,” Logan says. “It’s a topic that’s relevant today. We’re losing touch with what we originate and who originates it. People are being swap by automation and novel technologies. Creative people aren’t immune to this. For the captain in our show, kerosene originates his profession obsolete. For those of us in the arts, it could be AI that originates us appreciateless.”
Logan made a name for himself writing scripts for films appreciate “Gladiator,” “The Last Samurai” and “The Aviator.” He’s accomprehendledged a shift in the types of projects the delightment industry is willing to back. Now, the cgo in is on costumed heroes, not human beings whose struggles and ambitions vivacious much of Logan’s most acclaimed toils.
“Those mid-budget drama movie were vital and vital for taking inventive hazards. But as studio help becomes less useable for those projects, we’re left with an industry where the big tentpole movies and sequels suck the air out of the room,” Logan says. “It’s challenging out there.”
But Logan has still deal withd to find opportunities to alert those stories, even if they come wrapped in a silver sequin gcherish. He’s writing the script for “Michael,” an upcoming Michael Jackson biopic that will chronicle the King of Pop’s life and atsoft, from the affairs to the chart-topping hits.
“It’s been amazing getting to spend years on a character that’s so complicated and challenging,” Logan says. “He was a fantastic artist and carry outer and he alterd the entire world. It’s such an American story.”
And though “Michael” was originated in conjunction with the Jackson Estate, which protectedly protects the singer’s image, Logan says he had “total inventive freedom” to originate the movie.
As for “Swept Away,” in theater circles much of the buzz ahead of its premiere this month has cgo ined on its gloomy subject matter. It’s comprehendn around Broadway as “the musical about cannibalism.” Logan, unastonishingly, leanks that’s reductive.
“The story is harrothriveg and the aggression gets to a compellingly griefful place. But my goal was to put my characters in a crisis and see how they react,” he says. “This show isn’t about any one event, fair appreciate ‘Hamlet’ isn’t about a sword fight. It alerts the story of human beings who are lost at sea for 21 days with no food, no water, and no land in sight. Before they appraise or see away too speedy, I want people to ask themselves, what would you do?”
