In 2016 I was toast. My last two outings on Broadway had taken a toll. Though I’d been given the bucket-list gift of appearing in two of my all-time favorite plays, the power games and rancorous offstage relations that followed the initial elation of being cast left me disillusioned with Broadway and plagued by chronic feelings of inadequacy and stage fright. I was jittery and drunk off of residual cortisol from the multiple panic attacks I’d suffered publicly, onstage, before 740 oblivious patrons during the last play I was in.
After almost two decades of professional acting, these feelings of dread on the job were new and scary. The stage, long one of my most treasured happy places, had become an obstacle course of abject terror. Depressed and dead-ended, I felt I had no recourse but to abandon the boards altogether—or, at the very least, to stay away from the dark, troubled loners I’d developed a knack for playing. I broke the news to my agent and spent the following months seeking out smaller supporting roles in independent films with less heavy lifting.
A year later, out of the blue, I was asked to lead a new musical in development, portraying a maniacal and murderous mariner who relives a wayward life of sin from his tubercular deathbed—a man who claims to be the Devil himself. I had vowed to leave both the stage and tortured roles behind; my sanity was more important. But like the masochist I am, I said yes.
Then I tried to quit. At a crosswalk on Eighth Avenue in Midtown Manhattan, I impulsively called my agent and asked her, “How bad would it be if I dropped out?” She told me bluntly, “Pretty bad, I think.” It was October 2021, and I was having second thoughts. I was roughly a month away from flying west to Berkeley Repertory Theatre, where I would star in the world premiere of the show I so hastily said yes to in 2017, a gothic new musical about shipwrecked 19th-century whalers called Swept Away. The looming commitment was stirring within me the same horrible feelings I’d experienced the last time I took to the stage, and my scarred nervous system was telling me to run.
But quitting would have consequences. The production had been announced. Tickets were on sale and advances were strong. Stepping away now would mean letting a lot of people down. The director, Michael Mayer, was a dear friend and close collaborator who had changed my life at 20 when he cast me in Spring Awakening. What’s more, I’d been offered Swept Away before a script had even been written, a radical act of trust in an actor who hadn’t been part of a Broadway musical in six years.
And then there was the fact that the scribes behind the songs featured in Swept Away were none other than the Avett Brothers, a roots rock band I’d been a diehard devotee of since first hearing them in 2005. It was all too full circle. Too kismet. I couldn’t back out now. Not when I’d been helping develop the piece for three years in workshops and readings. Not after our initially announced premiere in the summer of 2020 had been delayed twice by the Covid-19 pandemic.
Besides, I knew very well what was at the root of my trepidation: good old-fashioned fear itself. Around this time, my therapist asked me what my worst-case scenario was regarding my reluctance to go to Berkeley. I said I was afraid I would have a mental break in the middle of the show one night and jump off the Golden Gate Bridge.
Yet my mind kept returning to Swept Away’s gobsmacking script, written by the masterful John Logan. The first time I read it, I was floored and terrified. My character, Mate—a lost soul and scalawag who takes a job on a doomed whaling voyage in an attempt to outrun a checkered past, only to be pushed to the brink of sanity and survival when his ship sinks and he finds himself marooned on a lifeboat with three other survivors—was unlike any I had ever encountered in a musical before, and it was certainly not the sort of role I was commonly asked to portray. Mate was somehow the story’s narrator, hero, and villain all at once. A complicated person with a transformative arc. In short, an actor’s dream.
I recognized that it was designed to be a meaty star turn in the right hands, but I honestly didn’t know if I was capable of taking such a big swing. The tortured Mate begins alone in a hospital bed for half an hour before starting the show and then goes to hell and back, finally dying in peace after 95 raw minutes onstage. I was afraid to take that trip with him eight times a week.
But I had learned by this point that the best thing a paralyzed performer can do for themself is the thing that scares them the most. So I kept my word and I went to Berkeley.
A few weeks before Christmas, in a sleepy East Bay still recovering from the pandemic, Swept Away rehearsals began. It was a much-needed salve for all of us involved. A year before, it had looked as if our industry was down for the count, but here we were, getting to do the work and share space in person again.
The moment was not taken for granted. I threw caution to the wind and dove head first into the material. By the time we were up on our feet choreographing the piece, I sensed something blossoming outward from somewhere deep within. A vital natural resource I hadn’t even realized had grown so scarce in my work and my life: Joy. I held fast to it and leaned in. Somewhere along the way, I fell back in love with acting onstage, my very first flame. The ghost lifted as my fear fell away, enabling me to feel every ounce of Mate’s pain, and I sobbed beneath the bright lights of the rehearsal room as we staged the show’s final scene.
Just as we proudly opened our nearly sold-out run in January of 2022, the Omicron variant of Covid hit the Bay Area. Despite rigorous health and safety measures taken to keep the wolves at bay, they found their way in anyway. Much of the cast fell ill and we had to cancel almost two weeks of shows. The New York Times understandably scrapped their trip to come interview us. I skipped my planned visit home to spend Christmas with my family and settled for cold takeout turkey at the Residence Inn. Ticket holders regularly didn’t show up, leaving a slew of empty seats in their wake. All the while, I was going through a seismic long-distance breakup with my partner of 10 years that threatened to unravel me entirely. Ironically, the tormented character I had been so scared to bring to life ended up becoming a saving grace during this dark time. He could always hold more weight, whatever I couldn’t carry. So I piled on the baggage.
Our initial stint out West might have been rocky, but all was not lost. Midway through our Berkeley engagement, the crowds and the critics started talking about the show, word kept spreading, and by March of 2022 we finished the run to multiple extensions and enthusiastic full houses. We all came out bonded on the other side, marked for life by this thing and jonesing to do it again. The West Coast bow of Swept Away ultimately didn’t move the needle enough to warrant a green light from the gatekeepers of Broadway, but we all knew that was unlikely for our still-developing show anyway. Nay, we would have to keep slugging it out where we were the most welcome, on America’s vital regional theatre circuit.
Almost two years later, in November of 2023, we were invited to make our East Coast premiere at Arena Stage in Washington, D.C. It went better than I could have ever imagined. Nobody got Covid. Not a single performance was cancelled. The run was a sell-out, breaking the box office record previously held by Dear Evan Hansen. We sold tickets to all 50 states, a feat Arena had never achieved before. Our entire team continued to outdo themselves and push their work further and deeper, leading to a critical response that lapped that of the Berkeley run. Funds were coming together behind the scenes to help capitalize a potential Broadway transfer. Our producing and PR team was growing. It was looking good! Yet closing night came and went, and despite our success, we still had not earned an invitation from a Broadway theatre.
A month after we wrapped up in D.C., several of the cast flew to Miami Beach to take part in the Broadway Across America conference, an annual theatre industry symposium that draws the attendance of touring theatre owners from around the country and specializes in sneak peeks of Broadway hopefuls. We arrived to this competitive card game with not one but two aces up our sleeve. Scott and Seth Avett, the benevolent brothers behind the beautiful, heart-wrenching songs of Swept Away, flew in from their homes in North Carolina and joined us onstage for a performance and Q&A in the ballroom of the historic Fontainebleau. It wasn’t long before they had the audience in tears. They regularly have that effect on people. By the end of the conference, we had finally made a big enough splash to impress the affluent arbiters of New York City, and our producers secured an offer for a slot at the Longacre Theater on Broadway in the winter of 2024. What had once seemed impossible now loomed on the horizon, and it couldn’t come soon enough, because I just so happened to be running out of money. Years of chasing a LORT contract across the country will do that to you.
It felt as if a warm embrace from the New York theatre community awaited us. My peers all seemed excited for our transfer. A guy passed me on his bike one day in Brooklyn and shouted, “Yeah! Swept Away! It’s coming!” How encouraging!
Still, I tried to manage expectations. I always knew Swept Away was more a long shot than a sure thing. It didn’t fully fit in, given the climate of today’s Broadway. The piece wasn’t a revival, so there were no familiar showtunes to entice the traditionalists. Nor were the songs chart-topping pop hits we could count on to hook a younger crowd. The script wasn’t based on a well-known film, TV series, book, cartoon, or comic book character. It wasn’t a flashy biographical trip through an icon’s life and songbook. It didn’t feature any big-name stars to lure tourists and sell a ton of tickets. The subject matter was heavy and the emotional core of the piece was unflinching in its ferocity. The protagonist was a slippery (albeit charming) white man guilty of heinous but historically American atrocities—not the easiest person to root for. Because of the show’s themes, time period and setting, the company featured an all male-presenting cast, something we were already catching flak for.
It’s also worth noting that Swept Away’s storyline featured a dramatically earned but divisive descent into survival cannibalism. Then came an act of religious deliverance in the show’s finale, another dicey thing for some theatregoers to digest. This was not an easy piece of mainstream theatre, and I doubted we’d be the kind of show that attracts a throng of fans with Playbills and Sharpies to the stage door after the first preview. But if the audiences in Berkeley and D.C. had taught us anything, it was that there was still an appetite out there for risky shows like ours.
So on we rowed into exciting new waters, announcing the Broadway run with a surprise appearance onstage alongside the Avett Brothers at the historic Forest Hills Stadium in May 2024. Then came a photo shoot for Vogue. Next, a music video. Before we knew it, rehearsals were underway and we were singing the National Anthem at a Yankees game. A surreal sunset press event took place on an actual sailing yacht in New York harbor beneath a miraculous visit from the Northern Lights.
We moved into the beautiful Longacre Theatre in October and quickly hit it off with the wonderful house staff there. It was a perfect port for us. But after we settled in, rumors started circulating that the old playhouse was haunted, and here we were bringing in a spooky story full of spirits and sacrilege. To be safe, well wishes and totems were offered up to any potential supernatural tenants, likely suspicious of what we were doing in their home. Beyond haunted, the Longacre is even thought by some to be cursed. Several shows that started out there with dreams of long illustrious runs found themselves closing up shop prematurely. Those in the know jokingly call it the Shortacre.
But to my delight and delirium, the unease vanished into the atmospheric haze after the lights came down on a triumphant and amply attended first preview. The audience bolted to their feet for the curtain call and roared with cheers and applause. And wouldn’t you know, at the stage door after the show, we were greeted by a throng of fans with Playbills and Sharpies in hand. Maybe, just maybe, we’d be the ones to break the Longacre curse.
And then, a week later, I almost died.
After our sixth preview, I was sitting at the bar in Hurley’s Saloon chatting with my castmate and understudy, Hunter Brown, when I took an awkward gulp of beer. It hurt. Like, really hurt. That’s the last thing I remember before waking up on the floor surrounded by a gaggle of concerned colleagues. Paramedics were on their way. Apparently I had stopped talking mid-sentence and gone completely slack before falling backward off my barstool and landing headfirst on the hard tile floor. Visions of great talents who had succumbed to fatal head injuries flashed before my eyes. Years of hard work, dedication and the dogged reclaiming of my elusive groove, and I wouldn’t even live to see Swept Away open on Broadway! Maybe the Longacre was jinxed after all. Or perhaps the show itself was as cursed as its star-crossed characters.
The EMTs arrived and administered a series of cognitive tests. My memory was intact and I seemed mostly okay, but because I’d hit my head so hard, they recommended I be evaluated more thoroughly by a doctor. In the ambulance en route to the hospital, I told Hunter he’d make a great replacement for me and was bound for rave reviews. I dictated final words to be delivered to my castmates and mused about the potential of being wheeled out onstage at the Tony Awards to a round of pity applause as I sat dead-eyed beneath the lights of Radio City in a vegetative state. It was all a front, of course—gallows humor to cover up the shock I was in. Hunter laughed at my crude jokes, but it wasn’t long before I was holding his hand and asking him if I was going to die. He assured me I wasn’t.
Fellow ensemble member David Rowen and my saint of a girlfriend, Mitzi Akaha, rushed to meet us at the hospital. Together we spent the night in the Bellevue ER until I was deemed safe enough for the time being from having suffered a concussion or traumatic brain injury. The doctor sent me home, and finally, around 4 in the morning, I slept.
As for why I’d fainted, it turned out I’d experienced a rare medical condition known as Swallow Syncope, in which an air bubble from a carbonated beverage presses against the vagus nerve as it travels down the esophagus and shuts down blood flow to the brain for several seconds, resulting in almost immediate unconsciousness. In other words: Savor your Bud Light. Don’t chug.
The following two weeks were nerve-racking, as I threw myself into the full-court press of gearing up for opening. Days spent rehearsing, tweaking text, altered staging, choreography cuts, vocal shake-ups. Nights spent performing and seeing if those changes actually worked in front of an audience. B-roll video shoots. Photo calls. Interviews.
Mitzi took up the task of watching me around the clock for signs of confusion, slurred speech, or anything that might indicate my cerebral cortex wasn’t entirely out of the woods. The consequence of my fall could have been so much worse, and I was flooded daily with gratitude that I had walked away with a warning. Still, the show called for me to go to incredibly dark depths each night, and the sheer physical and vocal exertion the role demanded had me trembling under the lights of the Longacre. Eventually there were enough days behind me to suggest that I wouldn’t suddenly hemorrhage and collapse onstage. Determined not to miss a step, I did what I had always done with this role: I used it all and funneled the near-death experience into my performance. I knew that Mate could handle it, even if I couldn’t.
In the midst of all of this, theatre critics started coming to observe and report what they saw—or did not see—in Swept Away. I tried to put my head down, soldier on, and trust the work we had done. When my castmate Wayne Duvall found me at the afterparty to tell me we were a Critic’s Pick, I cried. I’d been around long enough to know that the only real shot Swept Away had at surviving on Broadway was with a strong review in The New York Times, and now the die was finally cast. We just might be able to run after all. It was one of those too-good-to-be-true opening nights, so much so that I wondered if I actually had died when I hit my head on the Hurley’s floor two weeks prior and this was all actually some last gasp fever dream. I pinched myself and didn’t wake up—a good sign.
So we counted our blessings, and with a healthy dose of a humility and boatloads of thankfulness, we celebrated the almost decade-long journey it took to get here. I had been saying for months that our show was destined for one of two outcomes: Either we would open to scathing scrutiny and end up a proper flop with our poster on the wall at Joe Allen, or we would debut to auspicious praise and join the ranks of the Broadway season’s buzziest prospects. With our favorable critical assessment, it felt more likely the latter would come to pass. In my euphoric stupor, I failed to consider a third option could exist.
The Little Boat Lads group chat buzzed to life in my pocket; this was the text thread through which the four leads of Swept Away had kept in touch since the Berkeley days. I was on a break from filming an interview to promote the show, in the middle of what had been an eventful week. Just the day before, I’d learned that I’d been selected to have my character portrait drawn and hung on the wall at Sardi’s, an undeniably flattering honor for any New York theatre actor. The day before that, we had recorded Swept Away’s cast album.
My phone buzzed again. I glanced down at it. Wayne was texting to ask if we’d heard from our agents. Stark Sands replied that he had. Adrian Blake Enscoe, too. I had not. Fearing the worst, I thumbed into my email app and there it was: a message from my rep telling me that my fellow principal performers and the entire creative team had agreed to take a 50 percent salary cut in a last-ditch effort to keep Swept Away from closing. Would I consider doing the same?
I knew we weren’t a knockout at the box office. The empty seats I’d been clocking in the balcony made that much clear. But I didn’t realize the straits were so dire. My head spun at the news. We couldn’t give up so soon! We were a Critic’s Pick! I’d survived heartbreak, insolvency, hearing damage, Swallow Syncope, and near death by Bud Light! Now was the time to circle the wagons, not throw in the towel. We had opened on Broadway only two weeks before and barely had the chance to do any promotional appearances and build the word of mouth that is so vital for a new show to find an audience. Surely there was some padding in place to keep us afloat through the infamous sales slump of November to January?
I responded to my agent to say of course I would take the pay cut. I’d have waived my entire paycheck if Actors’ Equity allowed it. Then I went back to the interview and put on my best game face while I crossed my fingers and secreted a scenario in which this Hail Mary pass would keep the ship from sinking.
The following morning, my producer called me to break yet more news: Swept Away would close next week. We just couldn’t weather the turbulent box office numbers. The labor of love we’d fought for seven years to bring to life was dying young and there wasn’t a thing we could do to save it. The press release announcing our sudden closure went out in the middle of the show that night, so those in attendance had no idea they were one of our last audiences until I broke the news to them at the curtain call. The gasp that followed surprised me. I watched the faces before me melt from joy to anguish as I spoke. I issued a plea to not give up on supporting risky, left-of-center shows on Broadway, while also acknowledging the accountability the theatre industry itself must accept.
After many more than just one post-show Bud Light, I lurched home, passed out, and slept in. I awoke the next day hungover and heartsick and dragged myself back to the Longacre, where another surprise greeted me: We were sold out that night, and the rest of the week was about to follow suit. A few days later, something unprecedented happened. We added two more weeks to our run, pushing our closing date back to Dec. 29. The shows started selling immediately. Word on the street was that we couldn’t find an audience. Turns out they just needed to know we existed.
If you’re in a show and you want to know what that show is about, I recommend closing the show, because that’s what the show is about. The plot and themes of the piece inevitably end up reflecting its own fate as it lurches toward its terminus. In our final two weeks, serendipity revealed itself with each step as lyrics and lines alike took on newly apropos meaning. Every strand of dramatic DNA started connecting directly to what we were going through as an ensemble, even though the script had been conceived some seven years prior.
In death, the show was more alive than ever. We sweated, bled, and cried our way through those last few shows as it all slipped like sand through our hands. The Avett Brothers returned to NYC to bless audiences with several devastating post-show performances. It’s likely we delivered the most potent and explosive version of Swept Away as a result of the extreme emotional charge in the air. Luckily for us, the houses were teeming and more than willing to take it all in, whatever we had left in the tank. I cherished those sold-out crowds, though I wished they had shown up sooner . Even Patti LuPone came to see the show and pay her respects. She cried too.
And then it was over. After almost a decade of Swept Away serving as my beacon of hope somewhere up ahead, it was now behind me, shrinking smaller and smaller in the rearview. Just like that. All that work, all that sacrifice. Gone. Four months have passed since we closed and I’m still not over it. I don’t expect I will be for some time yet. Maybe I never will be. Words can only hint at how much I miss and mourn it. I loved playing this role and wanted it to last, to be seen. I was ready to go the distance, had signed a contract through Labor Day, was steeled to endure the mental minefield of a Broadway awards season. But I ended up unemployed by New Year’s Eve, now barely a footnote in a sexy spring slate full of star-studded opening nights. I can’t compete with that. Who can? Certainly not a show that closed last year. This industry has a short attention span and pays the most mind to the shiny new thing as it’s showered with roses in the centerstage spotlight. Everything else gets forgotten.
I suppose that’s the point, though. Part of the magic of theatre is that it is ephemeral. You cannot bottle it. You cannot keep it. You can film it with cameras and record it with microphones, but that won’t really cut it in the end. You can’t actually capture the act. You can only live it, as artist or audience, and then let it go. It’s the only way. It’s beautiful and it’s maddening.
Perhaps Scott Avett said it best in the lyrics to his song “The Once and Future Carpenter,” which I had the privilege of singing as Mate’s 11 o’clock number in Swept Away:
My life is but a coin, pulled from an empty pocket
Dropped into a slot with dreams of sevens close behind
Hope and fear go with it, and the moon and the sun go spinning
Like the numbers and the fruit before our eyes
Sometimes I hit, sometimes it robs me blind
It’s hard to argue with that at the end of the day
At least I didn’t die on the floor of Hurley’s Saloon, and for a little while, I felt at home onstage again.
John Gallagher Jr.’s Broadway credits include Rabbit Hole, Spring Awakening, American Idiot, Jerusalem, and Long Day’s Journey Into Night.
