Musical docks in Brisbane’s Glasshouse Theatre
THE LAST SHIP ★★★½
Glasshouse Theatre, QPAC, April 11
until May 3
Sting makes his entrance on a floating platform surrounded by welders and riveters, but this isn’t early MTV music videos. He plays a shipwright foreman in the north of England in a musical he has penned, and his live appearance on stage in Brisbane provides a very large champagne bottle to smash on the bow of the new Glasshouse Theatre.
The Last Ship, The concert, which first opened in Chicago in 2014, is a tribute to Wallsend-on-Tyne, the shipbuilding town where the pop icon grew up in the 1950s and ’60s, which was gutted by closures in the ’80s.
Margaret Thatcher’s war on unions and privatization of national industries became the subject of major drama, starting with TV landmarks. The boys from Blackstuff with Full Monty And Billy Elliot. However, the closure of a shipyard The Last ShipIt doesn’t touch too much on the effects on working people, or how Thatcher’s policies are destroying communities, or (as Sting has suggested in interviews) how the great digital reckoning is looming for all our businesses.
It’s more of a story about making peace with your past. This is understandable, as Sting left Wallsend behind after a troubled upbringing to become one of the world’s biggest rock stars and feels he owes it to the place. But it’s also about death, because he’s 74 now.
Sting’s character, Jackie White, receives devastating health news while also learning that the government is selling off the town’s main source of employment. Meanwhile, 30-something sailor Gideon Fletcher (Declan Bennett) returns to his hometown after 17 years to settle his late father’s affairs and finds he has unfinished business with his teenage love, local bar owner Meg Dawson (Lauren Samuels).
The musical’s book has been rewritten twice by different authors since its Broadway run, which was financially unsuccessful despite being nominated for a Tony. The latest script is by British playwright and novelist Barney Norris, but Norris and director Leo Warner (of 59 Studio in London) couldn’t quite resolve the show’s dramatic problems.
Those problems include a drawn-out second act that’s about three songs longer than needed and a climactic ending that takes a long time to get off the dock.
Sting and The Police fans should be extremely happy. She’s on stage for most of the action, singing some of the best material (including the rousing title song), but still pulls off the magic trick of getting lost in character. And after all, it looks like he doesn’t have decades of acting experience.
The songs are evocative and clearly hers; some have folkloric basis; others that showcase the composer’s DNA Moon over Bourbon Street And Every Breath You Take.
There are strong roles for women here, including Annette McLaughlin as the matriarchal Peggy White and Samuels as a former Elphaba. Bad – and it looks like it.
One person who feels a bit underserved is Shaggy. Wallsend Ferryman’s character is a bit arrogant – a lovable grim reaper – but he still could have had more to do with the story besides half a song and an odd sentence.
The musical comes to life most vividly in the scene where Gideon visits his late father’s house and sings the sad song. Dead Man’s ShoesIt’s a song that expertly fills in the gaps about his past. It follows this The Night the Boxer Learned to DanceA charming How I Met Your Mother song for the benefit of Meg’s teenage daughter Ellen (a sparkling turn from Hannah Richardson).
Against her mother’s wishes, Ellen wants to leave Wallsend and move to London to sing in a band: another Sting stand-in. Gideon’s warning to Ellen: “If you leave the wrong way, you can never really leave.” The Last Ship‘s Aha moment.
There are picket lines, death scenes, over-the-top (and explosive) bits; This is the thing that cuts most deeply.
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Nick Dent is a Culture Reporter for the Brisbane Times covering the arts and things to do in the city.Connect via email.
