Sting in the tale for The Last Ship with mixed reaction from critics
‘The Last Ship’ has got a mixed reaction from critics, but the proud Geordie’s stage musical is a heartfelt tribute to his home town, writes
Before the hits, the tall hair and the tantric yoga, Sting was a poor kid growing up in Wallsend, a small town in Northumbria, in the shadow of the ships.
The artist born Gordon Sumner was synonymous through the 1970s and ’80s with music as bright and glamorous as his peroxide fringe.
However, his youth in the rustbelt northeast of England couldn’t have been further from the rarefied heights of the top 10 The Police ruled with smashes such as ‘Message In A Bottle’ and ‘Walking on the Moon’.
After a lifetime spent escaping his roots he returned to them several years ago with his first stage musical. Loosely autobiographical, and caked in the grime, rust and poverty of Britain’s industrial hinterlands, The Last Ship is set in a Tyneside town where life unfolds beneath the looming towers of the shipyards.
It comes to Dublin in June and, in the city to promote it, Sting explains that to understand who he is as a person and artist you need to understand The Last Ship.
“Salmon have to go back where they are spawned,” he says, addressing a gathering of journalists in a suite at Bord Gáis Energy theatre.
“I’m immensely proud of my heritage. I realise, in hindsight, I was privileged to live in an industrial rich environment. Even though I hated it and wanted to escape, it was a great seeding ground for an artist because of the symbolism of the shipyards.”
The Last Ship is a story of decay — of the old ways of life turning to rust and the people left behind trying to make sense of it. Post-industrial decline doesn’t sound like a very promising premise for a musical but Sting, aged 66, is undeniably a master songwriter and channels the abiding loss into heartbreaking ballads, delivered by the cast in authentically dense Geordie accents.
A Celtic melancholy infuses the work. Irish and Scottish culture is part of the lifeblood of England’s north east, says Sting. And so they are also part of who he is as an artist.
“There was the Northumbrian tradition, which is Celtic, and then there was there was massive Scots and Irish migration… All our priests were Irish. A lot of the music reflects that. There is a huge Celtic influence in Newcastle – it’s a very rich tradition there.”
The Last Ship doesn’t draw directly from Sting’s life and if you want to know what Sumner was like as a young boy dreaming of stardom, the musical does not provide the answers.
Certainly anyone wondering what prompted him to record an album with Shaggy — the duo unveiled their collaboration to widespread mystification at the Grammys — will be none the wiser (their record 44/876 is released in April).
The one aspect of the work that is undoubtedly autobiographical is the strained relationship between wide-eyed protagonist Gideon and his father.
As a smart and ambitious young man who saw horizons beyond the half-built ships that soared over the laneway at the end of his street, the young Gordon Sumner would clash with his parents, his dad in particular.
Their relationship, loving but characterised by mutual incomprehension, remains one of the defining dynamics in his life.
“My dad died 25 years ago,” he says.
“I wrote an album, The Soul Cages [about that]. Both of my parents… they died very young. They’re still with me… when I perform, in my imagination. When I’m signing lyrics that are pertinent to them, they revisit me. I have to be diligent not to stop singing.”
Sting regards The Last Ship, co-written with Broadway veteran Jeffrey Seller, and directed in its original New York run by Wicked’s Joe Mantello, to be his strongest work — the one he would like to be remembered for.
However, the critical reaction to the musical when it began a truncated Broadway run in 2014 was mixed. Time dismissed it as “rudderless”, the New York Times described it as “ambitious” but beset by “nagging flaws”.
Upfront productions costs were $15m — with additional weekly expenses of $625,000. Such was Sting’s eagerness to literally keep the show on the road he joined the cast, taking over from his friend Jimmy Nail as labour leader Jackie White. And while this led to an uptick in attendance, nonetheless the theatre was generally at least one fifth empty (this in an age when Broadway shows are often straight sellouts).
Nail was due to reprise the part of White in the latest tour, including the Dublin dates. But in January it was announced that he would no longer be involved, with the role taken on by Joe McGann (best known for early 2000s ITV soap Night and Day).
“After protracted negotiations carried out in good faith, we regret to announce the production’s offer of employment to Jimmy Nail has been withdrawn,” said producer Karl Sydow. “All at The Last Ship thank him for his generosity and enormous contribution during what has been an eight-year journey.”
#TBT 1970 pic.twitter.com/bTuZBiNY38
— Sting (@OfficialSting) February 22, 2018
Ireland looms larger for Sting than might be expected. In the Eighties he lived some time near Roundstone in Connemara (“one of the most beautiful places on the planet”).
Later, he would investigate his Irish roots and be shocked at where they led.
“I knew part of my family was Irish but I knew very little about them. I did one of these ‘know your roots’ programmes in America and they found this lady called Mary Murphy who died in a poor house in Co Monaghan. She had lots of children, one of them escaped and ended up in Newcastle so that’s my ancestor.
“I visited her place and I have to say I was very moved and shocked, horrified really by the idea that because people were poor they were punished, as if it was some sort of divine providence that had led them to that. The contrary of that is rich people are rich because they deserve, which is complete nonsense.
“I think that idea is almost coming back right now. To go there and see how they lived, the men were separated from the women, the children were separated from everybody else — it was like a concentration camp for me.
“It was very moving and then I met some of my relatives in Monaghan which I didn’t even know I had, so it was a lovely experience, but grim as well.”
To publicise The Last Ship, in early December he embarked on a whistle-stop tour of venues in Ireland and the UK. At the BGE Theatre Sting performed several ballads from the play, his familiar transatlantic singing voice replaced by a Geordie burr.
The previous day he’d stopped off at a working man’s club in the hard-knock Edinburgh suburb of Leith. It was the first time he’d stepped inside a working man’s club in four decades — and he found the experience more nerve-wracking than you might expect for an international rock deity.
“It’s much easier to stand in front of 100,000 and do your thing. It’s much harder to stand up in front of a pub or a working man’s club in Leith.
“I served my apprenticeship in places like that — where people would throw things at you. It’s different and it’s good to go back. To be up on stage in a sports stadium…that’s dead easy.”
