Tag Archives: Jeremy Johnson

May 05

Sweeping Visuals Despite a Flawed Text: “Swept Away”

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Peter DiMaggio & ensemble. Photo: Nile Scott Studios

Presented by Speakeasy Stage
Music and lyrics by The Avett Brothers
Book by John Logan
Directed by Jeremy Johnson
Choreographed by Ilyse Robbins
Music directed by Paul S. Katz
Scenic Design by Janie E. Howland
Lighting by Karen Perlow
Featuring: Christopher Chew, Max Connor, Peter DiMaggio, Bishop Levesque

April 24 – May 23, 2026
Stanford Calderwood Pavilion at Boston Center for the Arts
527 Tremont Street, Boston, 02116

Review by Maegan Clearwood

BOSTON — Swept Away is ambitious in theme and scope: it calls for sweeping, spectacular design choices, attempting to explore existential ideas about guilt, grief, death, and despair. Speakeasy Stage, like the Broadway premiere two years ago, takes a fittingly larger-than-life approach to the visuals and performances. Unfortunately (again, like the Broadway premiere), Speakeasy can’t overcome the musical’s dramaturgical flaws.

Swept Away is a jukebox musical, featuring indie-folk-Americana-pop-rock songs by The Avett Brothers. It features many hallmark jukebox musical flaws: musical numbers that feel shoehorned in rather than plot-driven; a thematically uneven throughline; inconsistent character arcs. John Logan’s book crams songs into a story inspired by a real 1884 shipwreck of The Mignonette. It’s a grisly tale, an exploration of the spirit’s ability (or lack thereof) to survive in the face of abject horror, but the script is too bogged down by cliches to uncover any novel truths about the human condition. Continue reading →

Mar 17

Random Waves and Good Promise: THE SEABIRDS

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With David Lutheran and Brendan Mulhern. Photo credit: Argos Productions.

With David Lutheran and Brendan Mulhern. Photo credit: Argos Productions.

Presented by Argos Productions
by William Orem

Boston Playwrights Production
949 Commonwealth Ave
Boston, MA
March 15th – March 30th, 2013
Argos Productions Facebook Page

Review by Craig Idlebrook

(Boston) Purgatory can be the hardest thing on a man, the play The Seabirds seems to suggest. It also can be very difficult on an audience. And that’s what makes a new script so deliciously maddening to watch take shape.

There are so many good elements to this play, which revolves around a Union lighthouse keeper, Laben Shadfield (David Lutheran), and a Confederate deserter, Mickey Leance (Brendan Mulhern) who are forced to share a spit of rock on the sea. Great central characters, winning snatches of dialogue and nuanced touches of historical accuracy help immerse the audience into a time when the nation was tearing itself in two. Continue reading →

Apr 08

Community amidst Hostility: THE TEMPERMENTALS

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Steve Kidd, Will McGarrahan, Victor L. Shopov, & Shelley Bolman in The Temperamentals. Photo by Mark S. Howard

The Tempermentals by Jon Marans, Lyric Stage Company, 3/30/12-4/28/12, https://lyricstage.com/

main_stage/the_temperamentals/.

Reviewed by Craig Idlebrook

The oppressed can’t name their condition without fear of reprisal.  They can’t gather together.  They can’t escape their condition in the traditional refuges of family, community, friendship and sex.  Imagine trying to create change swimming against such a tide.  Continue reading →