Ruth Leon recommends… When The Last Ship Sails – Sting

When The Last Ship Sails – Sting ​
I have never understood why Sting’s only full-scale musical was destined to play on Broadway, and not in London’s West End or, better still, on tour around the British regions. It was inevitable that this very personal story of Sting’s hometown, the shipbuilding town of Wallsend in Tyne and Wear, an area of the gritty industrial heartland of the NorthEast of England that most Americans had never heard of, was going to be a hard sell to an American audience.

The Northern accents were hard to understand, there was no glitter or showbiz razzamatazz, and the characters, including Sting’s father, played in the first cast by Jimmy Nail,   weren’t particularly cuddly or user-friendly. Americans like their musicals big and brash and where they can see on the stage where the eye-watering amount they paid for their tickets has been spent.

The Last Ship was, despite the excitement surrounding its opening and its Tony nominations, a flop on Broadway although some of us who did understand the accents, loved it.

Before it opened, Sting and his band gave a concert at the Public Theatre in New York to promote the show, a sort of public workshop to introduce the cast album.

The Last Ship is inspired by the shipbuilding community of Wallsend where Sting was born and raised. There are some excellent songs here, as you would expect from such an experienced songwriter. Sting and the band are joined onstage by the actor and singer Jimmy Nail who had already been cast in the leading role.

Lots of hopeful playwrights and songwriters do workshops and presentations of their upcoming work with the idea of introducing it to producers and potential audiences and they usually consist of the writer and one or two friends performing the material but this, because it’s Sting, is more elaborate than most with a stage full of musicians and back-up singers.
In my view, this concert video gives a better rendering of this interesting show than it was given on Broadway.

​Definitely worth your time, especially if you’re a Sting fan.

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