[title]
★★★
Sting’s musical The Last Ship has had a fairly rough sailing of it so far: in the 13 years since it launched in the States it’s been through three iterations with three different writers and three different directors. The one great constant is Gordon Sumner himself: as well as writing the songs, he’s expended a lot of time and money on the project, including a stint performing in the 2014 Broadway incarnation (where he replaced his old pal Jimmy Nail in an effort to bolster flagging ticket sales) and this globally touring version in which he’s just gone ‘fuck it’ and fully embraced the role of grizzled shipyard foreman Jackie White.
There are a lot of maddeningly avoidable problems with The Last Ship, but for the first 10 minutes or so they’re essentially irrelevant because it has a truly awesome start. The hulking full-sized ship’s hull of 59 Productions’ semi-projected set is a stunning sight to behold, and the opener ‘Island of Souls’ is a rare classic Sting song, given a real shot in the arm by clanking industrial shipyard sounds and a fiery vocal from the man himself.
It’s a decent first half in general, charting the beginning of the end of the Wallsend shipyards – where Sting’s father Ernest worked – though the eyes of its workers and the local community, plus Gideon (Declan Bennett), who has returned to town after 17 years’ absence to come to terms with his late father’s death. Several characters from the previous versions have been dropped for Leo Warner’s production. But new for this version – which has a book by Brit playwright Barney Norris – is the Wallsend Ferryman. A sort of semi-mystical, Charon-like figure, he’s been intermittently played on The Last Ship’s international dates by Sting’s late-in-life BFF Shaggy. Yes, Shaggy. He only did two dates here and has now left the London production (Lejaun Sheppard replaces him) but I have to say he was pretty good: he can sing, he can aura farm, at one point the orchestra moves to a reggae rhythm and he winks at the audience. Delightful.
Things do alas take a turn. The project is clearly extremely personal to Sting, with Jackie presumably representing his dad and Gideon the younger Sumner (Gideon was in the marines; Sting was in The Police). It’s weird then that they’re not related here: they don’t have to be but it would have made the story a lot more coherent. Both Bennett and Sting are decent: the craggy Sumner really rocks a boiler suit and the sort of paintstripper thick Tyneside accent that would probably have stopped The Police breaking America if he actually spoke like that (it is, by the by, baffling that he decided to launch it in the US first).
But Jackie and Gideon’s storylines flail about almost entirely separate from each other, with Gideon in town to deal with the legacy of a deceased father we never meet. Norris is the veritable patron saint of plays about people returning to their declining hometowns and he injects his characteristic bittersweet warmth into proceedings. But how much better might this have been if the lead characters actually had a relationship?
The mostly original songs are okay: a lot of gruff Geordie-accented folk ditties, heavy with rhyming couplets and fiddles. The limited number of old songs come from Sting’s 1991 record The Soul Cages, on which he addressed similar themes. But there are points where you do think that Sting singing a nice MOR ballad in his Sting voice might settle everyone's nerves a little bit.
The main problem though is a plot that lurches from tender social realism to pure garbage. Initially, as the shipyard loses its government contract and the town is threatened with ruin, The Last Ship feels of a respectable piece with the growing body of nostalgic musicals about the decline of industrial England in the 20th century.
But the story gets more and more ludicrous as the workers first go on strike (it’s hard to say why as the shipyard is closed) and then decide that what nobody would be expecting is if they do the exact opposite and break in and finish the final ship in the dock for free.
Nobody ever explains the logic behind this, presumably because there is none beyond ‘musical theatre vibes’. I mean I do kind of get it: it’s a final defiant gesture to show these workers meant something. The true story of the decline and closure of the Swan Hunter shipyard in Wallsend was always going to need sexing up. But so many smart and talented people have worked on The Last Ship for so long that I’m mystified as to how none of them could have come up with an ending that didn’t feel like it was hallucinated by AI. I mean Sting, if you’re reading this: for a small consultation fee I will happily suggest some alternative endings that make modestly more sense. But I’m sure Barney Norris could think of plenty too: the sense is that whatever tinkering subsequent writers and directors have been permitted to do, the overall course is locked in
The Last Ship is an awesome spectacle and a heartfelt one too. It is a personal project, which gives it integrity. Cutting edge projectionists 59 Productions are an inspired choice. Shaggy was fun. But after 13 years and three incarnations, is there really a classic musical waiting to be coaxed out? I suspect it’s too late to turn that ship around.
Theatre Royal Drury Lane, until Oct 3. Buy tickets here.
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