Sting and the dockers

PETER MASON is impressed by the political charge of Sting’s musical tale of shipyard closure

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IT’S odd that back in 2013 Sting chose to launch The Last Ship, his debut musical, in the US, where audiences were unlikely to engage positively with the tale of a Thatcher-era shipyard closure in the north-east of England.

The initial Sting-less production received a muted reception in Chicago and then on Broadway. Despite arriving in Britain in 2018 for short runs in Newcastle and Manchester, since then it has appeared in fits and starts and in various guises, including in Germany, Norway and Denmark.

Only now, with a more sumptuous production and a reworked book by Barney Norris, is The Last Ship finally getting what perhaps it should have had in the first place — an outing at a big West End theatre with Sting himself in one of the headline roles.

Though still only scheduled for a brief stint of 16 performances, this surely is the spectacular treatment that such an ambitious, politically charged musical deserves.

Centred around a mid-1980s industrial dispute at a shipyard in what could easily be Sting’s home-town of Wallsend, The Last Ship follows a group of workers, led by a Marxist shop-steward (Joe Caffrey as Billy Thompson) and a determined but physically ailing foreman (Jackie White, played by Sting himself), as they try to find a way to take the future of their workplace away from privatisation and into their own hands.

Simultaneously we also track the fortunes of Gideon (Declan Bennett), a 30-something who’s returned home after years away from the place he once loathed. As he optimistically attempts to rekindle a relationship with his long-estranged sweetheart, Meg (Frances McNamee), both parties find their futures are bound in with the workers’ struggle, which promises either to push them further apart or bring them closer together.

Thus drawing together the political and the personal, the resulting drama is at times powerfully emotional, especially as we head to a visually dramatic finale in which the ship-yarders fight back against the power of the state and the ensuing excitement seems to fill the whole theatre.

The songs and lyrics, arranged with hints of north-east folk music and Northumbrian smallpipes, are distinctively and attractively Sting-ish, while the set, dominated by the vast video-wall hulk of a ship under construction, is arresting in conception and execution.

There’s no doubting that the presence of Sting elevates the entire performance, and with his friend Shaggy on stage for this night (playing the spirit-like Wallsend ferryman, observing and directing events), there’s a real feeling of star quality to add to the many fine aspects of a production that draws favourable comparisons with two other socio-political musicals, Billy Elliott and Blood Brothers.

Although not quite in the same class as either of those two — it moves rather slowly in parts and there are some overly one-dimensional characterisations, especially on the Thatcherite side of the fence — it certainly appears that all the previous iterations of The Last Ship have served to knock it into good shape — so much so that it might now be able to gain wider acclaim and another, longer, run in Britain.

Runs until October 3. Box Office: 0203 925 2998, lwtheatres.co.uk 

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