The title and author — Thomas Keneally, who wrote “Schindler’s List” — suggest a show about the trains that raced to German concentration camps. But the new off-Broadway musical “Transport” actually concerns the 19th-century conscripts shipped off from Ireland to Australia.
Keneally was inspired by the story of his wife’s great-grandmother, who was sent from Cork to Sydney for shoplifting. Bridging continents like his subject, the Aussie writer teamed up with Larry Kirwan, frontman of New York’s long-running Irish rock band Black 47.
The result is a well intended, but clunkily earnest, show that shuffles good intentions and old clichés.
All of the action takes place on the ship Whisper in 1838, focusing on four of the unfortunate women traveling cargo.
The destitute Bride (Pearl Rhein) is off to “seven long years cruel servitude/In Botany Bay, Australia” — pronounced Austra-lee-ay — because she “stole some butter to put on my bread.” The others are leaving behind equally terrible conditions, which led to equally terrible consequences.
Not that we care much about any of it, because the characters aren’t sharply drawn, and each one can be boiled down to a single characteristic.
Bride is the beautiful lassie who ends up winning over the dashing ship doctor, Delamare (hunky Edward Watts, late of “Scandalous”). Kate (Jessica Grové) is the hot-headed revolutionary. Polly (Emily Skeggs) is the plaintive young mother. And Maggie (Terry Donnelly) is the old crone with visions of the upcoming Irish famine.
The conditions aboard ship are as bad as you’d expect. And while the lash puts in an appearance, there’s no rum and only a vague reference to sodomy — when the sour Captain Winton (Mark Coffin) alludes to “a time when a lack of wealth cost me the affection of a handsome . . .” then trails off darkly.
Kirwan’s serviceable score draws from pop and Irish folk, with power ballads that sound like outtakes from “Les Misérables.” With bigger arrangements than the ones allowed by a five-piece band, you could imagine numbers like Kate’s “Lost to Me Now” (about her late husband) and Delamare’s “The Price of Love” (about what separates him from his beloved) soaring to Broadway size.
The show is well-staged and designed by Tony Walton (a multiple Tony nominee for shows going back to the original “Pippin”), whose modest set efficiently suggests a ship’s various decks and nooks. Still, “Transport” offers little to get excited about — the women may reach the land down under, but the audience remains at sea.