Being trapped in a small whaleboat in the middle of a stage can create strong bonds, especially if you’ve been doing it off and on for over three years. That is definitely the case for Stark Sands and Adrian Blake Enscoe, who have played brothers in the Avett Brothers musical Swept Away in the Berkeley Repertory Theatre production in California, Arena Stage production in D.C., and now on Broadway. “The fact that we've done [the show] for so long together, we've learned things along the way,” explains Sands. “By doing it out of town twice, without our families or loved ones around, we learned to rely on each other.” 

The pair stopped by Playbill offices just before Swept Away posted its closing notice (it will now run until December 15). Fresh off of recording the Swept Away cast album the night before, the pair brought along a banjo and a guitar in tow to perform a song from the show called "Murder in the City," a ballad between two brothers. Watch the heartfelt performance in the video above.

In Swept Away, after the large whaling ship sinks in a massive storm, the remaining half of the show's runtime is spent with three crew members and the ship's captain isolated in a whaleboat with no food or water. Four grown men in a vessel about the size and shape of a wooden canoe create very close quarters. This is especially true for Sands and Enscoe, who spend much of their time wedged together in one of the apexes of the boat, comforting or leaning on each other to sleep. “We are literally nestled into each other, very weak, spooning in despair,” explains Sands, who credits his close friendship with why he's so comfortable in the compact set. Even during the rehearsals and tech adjustments, the two would stay sitting together inside the cramped boat. “It would be so crazy to be just physically intimate with anybody else in my life, besides my wife and my kids, as I am with Adrian, and it's totally normal.”

The two first met during Enscoe’s audition for Little Brother. Sands, already attached to the project as Big Brother, read with 10 young men in the running for Little Brother, the last one being Enscoe. “The chemistry was immediate," Sands recalls. “When that's there, you don't fight it. You just go, ‘Oh, well, that has to be the choice.’ Because it is really important to have the chemistry in this particular show.”

Before rehearsals started, they began to form their friendship. The first song Sands and Enscoe worked on together was “Murder in the City," a song that was originally written for the Avett Brothers’ album The Second Gleam. “It was a really great way to have an intro to being brothers,” says Enscoe of the experience. The song is an introspective ballad between two brothers looking back on their lives and their close bond. In the context of the show, it is sung by the duo alone at night on the top deck of the ship after the Little Brother runs away to join the whaling crew and Older Brother follows him to try to bring him home. “It's one of my favorite parts of [Swept Away], because it's a big show, lots of ensemble and dance up to that point,” Enscoe reflects. “We're at a hinge point in the show where something happens afterward that changes everything. But this is one moment where it feels so simple and solitary, just the two of us.”

In the Playbill studio performance, the two brought along their own instruments, but they don't actually play music in the show (there's an offstage eight-member orchestra for that). Although neither actor plays their instruments in Swept Away, they are no strangers to playing on stage. Enscoe is part of the folk band Bandits on the Run, and Sands has played guitar, most famously, in American Idiot.

The choice of these two instruments provides a bit of a kismet connection to Scott and Seth Avett, who are famous for playing banjo and guitar together on stage. “When we’re playing this song together, I can feel the intimacy in a way that I feel with the Avetts,” says Enscoe. “They’ve just spent a lot of time together, spent time touring, and spent time playing these songs. It puts you in sync in a way that you can't really get in any other way than just making somebody your family.” 

The cast first met Seth Avett when he attended a performance of Swept Away at Arena Stage. “[Seth] saw me in that backstage hallway. He just walked up and gave me a huge hug. And then I hugged him,” Sands reminisces. “I said, ‘Thank you so much for your music.' He looked at me, and he said, ‘It's not my music anymore. It's our music.’”

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Photos: Swept Away on Broadway

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