Good things tend to happen when Michael Mayer and John Gallagher Jr. get together. Both won Tony Awards in 2007 for the game-changing Broadway rock musical Spring Awakening, Mayer for Best Direction, and Gallagher, at age 22, for his performance as the angst-ridden Moritz Stiefel. The pair returned to Broadway in 2010 with the Tony- and Grammy Award-winning American Idiot, the rock opera based on the 2004 Green Day album of the same name.

Now Gallagher and Mayer have reunited for a third collaboration in Swept Away, a new musical featuring the music of American indie folk band the Avett Brothers and a book by John Logan (writer of the Tony Award-winning play Red). Swept Away takes its premise from the Avett Brothers’ concept album, Mignonette (also released in 2004), which was inspired by a real-life shipwreck that left four survivors stranded at sea in 1884. Logan’s script weaves the Avett Brothers’ music (including songs from Mignonette and other albums) into a story detailing gruesome choices the men made to survive two weeks lost at sea. In other words, in spite of its November to December run, a time that theaters usually set aside for uplifting family productions, this is not a light holiday show.

The musical had a rocky world premiere at California’s Berkeley Rep in early 2022. Omicron surged just as the play began its short run, causing many ticket buyers—and the lucrative investors new plays rely on to get to Broadway—to stay home. It is now enjoying a second production at Arena Stage, where local audiences have the chance to see some of theater’s most esteemed rock musical creators as they develop a new work that producers hope will have a Broadway production in its future.

Arena Stage has experience developing new shows with Broadway aspirations. Both Dear Evan Hansen and Next To Normal started at Arena Stage before finding success on the Great White Way. According to Arena Stage, people from more than 40 states have already purchased tickets for the show’s five-week run and the opening night preview on Nov. 25 sold out. 

On a gray day in late November, City Paper met with Mayer and Gallagher at Arena Stage to talk about Swept Away, their working relationship, and making rock music thrive onstage.

Gallagher, who trusts Mayer to such an extent that he signed on to the project before even reading the script, quickly confides, “Working with Michael again felt like coming home.” He continues, “When we walked into the rehearsal room together it was just like ‘ah!’ I forgot how easy and fun this can be.”

Of course, fun is an interesting way to describe a musical that Gallagher, who has starred in several horror flicks, as well as the Aaron Sorkin HBO series The Newsroom, describes as “one of the weirdest, more challenging, messy, dark scripts I had ever read.” But it was the messiness that drew Gallagher in. 

“I thought it was so courageous because there is so much discussion while developing new musicals about not offending anybody and making sure it can be commercial. This spat in the face of all that.”

The actor calls the Avett Brothers one of his favorite bands, but that becomes evident when Mayer credits Gallagher for turning him on to the band’s music back when the pair were working on American Idiot. Gallagher had an Avett Brothers poster in his dressing room at the time.

Unbeknownst to Gallagher, soon after Idiot opened on Broadway in 2010, Swept Away’s producers approached Mayer about directing a musical based on the Avett Brothers’ music. But because creating a new musical can take a long time, it was a good six or seven years before they had Logan’s script to show him. “I was moved by it, and I thought, OK, there is something here,” Mayer says. “I’ve done this so much now that I trust my gut.”

His next thought? “We have to cast Gallagher. It’s a no-brainer.”

“There is a sense of trust between the two that is amazing,” Swept Away’s co-lead producer Matthew Masten tells City Paper separately. “They have a shorthand and know how to get the best out of each other.”

Mayer initially envisioned Gallagher as the Older Brother character in Swept Away (a role now played by another American Idiot alum Stark Sands). But after the team had trouble finding someone to play the central character of the Mate, he gave Gallagher a shot at the part. And Gallagher killed it. 

“Johnny’s been part of the show for so long now that we literally can’t envision anyone else in the role,” Masten says. “He’s made it his own. No one else could possibly do that part justice as well as he can.”

“When I met Johnny, he was 20,” Mayer says. “He walked in and nailed his audition for Spring Awakening. I’ve seen him grow from playing the super young troubled kid in Spring Awakening to the angsty, post-adolescent 20-something in American Idiot. With each performance, he reveals greater depth and power and skill. It’s thrilling to see his progression and feel like I was a part of it in each of these shows.”

Fans of Mayer and Gallagher’s previous work know they’re gifted at making hard-hitting rock songs work in a musical theater setting, a medium that has often struggled to successfully incorporate rock music into its oeuvre. Rock music designed to have an edge can often feel diluted or showy in musicals, where jazz hands and kicklines were once the rule of the day. For Gallagher and Mayer, the songs are always the starting point for getting hard-hitting music to work on theatrical stages.

“It’s truth-telling,” Mayer says. “Nothing is done for effect. There is something honest in all three of the shows Gallagher and I have done together. In Swept Away, the Avetts aren’t imagining other people so much as giving voice to their own inner selves. This is them.”

“The Avetts are such hearts-on-their-sleeves storytellers,” Gallagher says. “These songs will always pack a wallop when you put them on.”

Gallagher also attributes the success of his and Mayer’s collaborations to a willingness to rewrite the rules when they start a new project. “Musical theater is such a strange art form. You can try a formula that worked for one show, and it won’t work for the next,” he says. “Each time, you are starting from scratch. But the main thing is that you have to have good songs. A show can be flashy, cool, and exciting but lifeless if there are no stakes in the storytelling.”

D.C. audiences will soon have a say in deciding if Swept Away is the next entry into Gallagher and Mayer’s list of hits. But for the two friends, the production is already a win. 

“Working with Michael is always such a fun and safe place to go,” Gallagher says, noting that the role of Mate is so intense that when he first read the script he wondered if he had the fortitude to do it eight times a week. “If you need to go out onto the far fringes of your sanity, this is the best place to do it because I know I can come back and find a dear, true friend. When they come for me with the memo pad on my deathbed to talk about my life in the arts, the biggest chapter will be about Michael Mayer. He’s given me everything.”

Swept Away, with music by the Avett Brothers, book by John Logan, and directed by Michael Mayer, runs through Dec. 30 at Arena Stage. arenastage.org. $41–$180.