by Robert Kahn on October 26, 2014 at 9:45 PM ET
Workers unite to try and take control of their ship yard in Sting’s very Sting-like new musical, “The Last Ship,” now open at the Neil Simon Theatre. Photo: Joan Marcus
Submerged beneath an often told prodigal-son story is a haunting, gorgeously executed and involving musical that marks the debut of a new Broadway composer—Sting.
The British songwriter was inspired by his own childhood in writing “The Last Ship,” about a group of U.K. ship builders whose livelihoods are threatened by the changing global market, in a time that evokes the 1980s. The musical, directed by Joe Mantello and burnished by Steven Hoggett’s foot-stomping choreography—Hoggett’s “Once” is one of many recent musicals “The Last Ship” calls to mind—has just opened at the Neil Simon Theatre.
Sting, as so many of us know, grew up Gordon Sumner in Newcastle’s seafaring Wallsend district. In “The Last Ship,” Gideon Fletcher (Michael Esper, of “American Idiot”) abandons that same community as a young man, rather than don the ship-builder’s boots his father has in waiting.
When Gideon gets word from the town priest (a potty-mouthed Fred Applegate, getting all the best lines) that his dad is dying, he returns home, to find the Swan Hunter yard’s future in danger and his childhood love engaged to another man. It’s a familiar story that in lesser hands would quickly wobble under its weight.
As it happens, a great cast, led by Esper and Rachel Tucker (a one-time West End Elphaba, in “Wicked”) as Meg, that one-time love, prevent that from transpiring.
It’s bracing to see Esper in a more adult, even paternal role, and it’s one he pulls off with charisma. That Esper’s Gideon must somehow make peace with his past, the abusive father and so on, is a foregone conclusion, but his methods of doing so struck me as exceedingly honest.
Sting released songs for this musical on an album last year. A few—“Island of Souls,” and “All This Time,” with its refrain “I’d bury the old man/I’d bury him at sea”—are comfortingly familiar, if you own “The Soul Cages.” Esper, with winning newcomer Collin Kelly-Sordelet, as Meg’s son, have a swell duet in “The Night the Pugilist Learned How to Dance,” which has Gideon teaching the boy about similarities between sparring and dancing, all from the confines of a prison cell. (Could anyone other than Sting get away with that song title?)
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There are so many cliches and potential pitfalls in this story that I went into “The Last Ship” with low expectations: The boy trying to escape his father’s shadow. The second chance, will they-or-won’t-they romance with the girl from his past. I had every reason to think “The Last Ship” would take on water. It doesn’t. This boat floats.