Stark Sands and Adrian Blake Enscoe are riding the wave of 'Swept Away' together

The actors play brothers in the folk musical about a shipwreck, and they've bonded over the many storms they and their co-stars weathered both on and off stage.

"The show is about survival after a shipwreck, and it's become this weird life-imitating-art moment," said Adrian Blake Enscoe, one of the stars of the maritime musical Swept Away. “The journey to get to Broadway has been” — here Enscoe stopped as his co-star Stark Sands finished his sentence: “a story of survival.”

Shoulder-to-shoulder the two actors sat throughout our interview, Sands with an arm draped, as though instinctively, behind Enscoe's back. The pair have played siblings in various iterations of Swept Away on and off for five years — Sands as the pragmatic, protective "Big Brother" to Enscoe's impulsive, adventurous "Little Brother," who find themselves far from their family farm and aboard a whaling ship. Not unlike their characters' bond, which is tested on deck and then in a cramped lifeboat, Sands and Enscoe's relationship is forged from going through Swept Away's alternately calm and stormy journey to Broadway together.

“There are different ways people bond, and one of the strongest is through hardship,” said Sands. "The ups and the downs and the anguish of it all [...] bonded us because we were family. We became family."

Becoming brothers

The pair were almost destined to be a chosen family, as Sands's involvement with Swept Away directly helped Enscoe get on board. The journey began in 2019 with an request from writer John Logan and director Michael Mayer for Sands (whom Mayer directed in American Idiot on Broadway in 2010) to join a two-week workshop of a musical set to the songs of the folk rock band The Avett Brothers. (Among their ouvre is a 2004 concept album inspired by the real-life 1888 shipwreck of the Mignonette.)

"It was almost like an extended audition," Sands said. In his case, it landed him the part of Big Brother wherever that musical folktale, which became Swept Away, went next. He even attended callbacks for Little Brother a few months later, performing with all the auditioners.

"And the very last one to show up," Sands recalled, "was my little brother, Adrian."

"I received a callback that morning!" Enscoe jumped in, laughing. "I heard [Stark] say I showed up totally sweaty. And I [didn't] know the song!" But when he and Sands sang together, "the energy was so clear" that it was a match, Sands said.

However, pandemic delays meant that they didn't actually play their parts on stage until 2022, when Swept Away premiered at Berkeley Rep in California. Even that run had fits and starts as Covid's Omicron variant forced performance cancellations. That was the first offstage hardship the men had to weather together. In an odd way, performing in a tiny lifeboat day after day helped, as Sands, Enscoe, and the two other lead actors — Wayne Duvall as the Captain and John Gallagher Jr. as the Mate — were forced into physical closeness (Enscoe joked that they were "spooning in despair") that begat the emotional kind.

Sands recalled that all four men had to share a dressing room in Berkeley, a venture they willingly continued during their next pre-Broadway run at Washington, D.C.'s Arena Stage. "When we walked off stage, we were there for each other physically, in the same space," Sands said. The dressing rooms at Broadway's Longacre Theatre are too small for them all to share, so they claimed one floor with four rooms across from each other.

"The doors stay open, we're walking around, poking our heads in, hanging out with each other the whole time," he continued. "That is really useful before and after, to maintain that camaraderie."

It is, after all, not just the brothers' relationship that evolves at sea, but that between all four characters, especially as Swept Away veers into dark territory. The charming and devilish Mate, in particular, develops a bond with Little Brother on deck that puts them both at odds with Big Brother. The alliances — and the very humanity — of all three, plus the Captain, are tested on the lifeboat when their survival looks unlikely.

Welcome to the family

Though the Arena Stage production and Broadway transfer were much smoother sailing, the next offstage storm soon rolled in. Shortly after starting Broadway performances on October 29, Swept Away announced a December 15 closing. A surge of demand from the show’s passionate fanbase earned it an extra two weeks, though the new end of the cast's five-year journey on December 29 looms no less large, or less sudden.

"We're really buoyed by the support [of] the audience," Enscoe said. Sands has invited audience members to chat with him on Instagram Live, while Enscoe, a folk band member himself, has performed Avett Brothers songs at the Swept Away stage door, where both actors regularly greet theatregoers.

"People will give us these tearful renditions of how they feel after these shows and tell us sometimes about things in their life that it conjured up," Enscoe said. It's safe to say the brothers' relationship makes an impact: "They will be like, 'I need to show my sibling this.'"

"Those stage door experiences are sacred to me," echoed Sands. "Somebody wants to talk, I'm there to listen. I want to check on them and make sure they're okay because the show is a wild ride."

A very big brotherly thing to say. Ironically, in real life, Sands is a younger brother (by six minutes) and Enscoe is an older brother. "I like to think we're equalizing something, the way we're playing across our natural-born roles," Enscoe said. But they align with their characters' personalities: "I am always jumping around, taking risks, and doing crazy stuff," he continued.

"And I'm saying, 'Be careful. Don't do that. You might hurt yourself," Sands added earnestly, Enscoe laughing all the while.

Journeying forward

This interview took place a few days after Swept Away's two-week extension was announced. Despite the bittersweetness that hung about our conversation, there was also a sense of joy that suggests, while Sands and Enscoe's onstage brotherhood will soon end, their offstage one won’t. That's the final way Swept Away's art imitates life: "It's a show that goes down to the very bottom, but it also uplifts at the end," Enscoe said. (Or, to quote a lyric from the show: "It gets dark, but there's always a light.")

Both reflected optimistically on the bond they forged during Swept Away. Enscoe recalled "immediately pouring [his] heart out" to Sands during one of their earliest meetings, confiding his nerves. "I didn't even think I would be on Broadway five or six years ago. I am in a folk band. I have a folk voice. I'm like, 'What business do I have?'" he recalled, then turned to his co-star. "You paved the way for me, Stark, even before I met you, because you were singing in Kinky Boots and American Idiot."

"When I was making my Broadway debut in Journey's End [...] I was terrified, and I looked to the guys in the cast," Sands replied. "I looked at what their work ethic was and how they showed up every day. I'm so happy to now hear that I can be a model for other people, because I was you in 2007."

Will the cycle continue someday? "It will," Sands said confidently, looking to Enscoe with pride.

A shy smile spread across Enscoe's face. "Knock on wood."

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Watch the extended interview to hear more from Stark Sands and Adrian Blake Enscoe about Swept Away:

Interview excerpts have been condensed and edited for length and clarity.

Photo credit: Swept Away on Broadway. (Photos by Emilio Madrid)