The Last Ship
*****
Wales Millennium Centre, Cardiff, Mon 14 May
Once these isles were a shipbuilding powerhouse, but no more. The UK is dotted with cities and towns where the ghosts of shipyards abound, and Wallsend is one. Singer/songwriter Sting lived in the shadows of the large ships that loomed over the end of his street. A worker sings in The Last Ship’s sea shanty-style Shipyard, that they’ve built battleships, super tankers and everything in between.
This original musical – Sting’s first theatrical score and loosely autobiographical – is inspired by his concept album The Soul Cages, which deals with the loss of his father, growing up on the Tyneside and observing the scuppering of that once great industry. There was a brief run on Broadway but no great critical reception. With rigging tightened, director Lorne Campbell aboard, and a number of characters and songs jettisoned, the show is again afloat.
Gideon Fletcher is a young man feeling confined by his town. Not wanting a job in the shipyard, he signs on for a stint as a sailor, telling his sweetheart Meg that he’ll be back for her. That promise is full of holes – he docks in port 17 years later. In his absence his father has died, the shipyard is closing and he’s in for a big surprise regarding his teen romance. Adult Gideon (Richard Fleeshman, channeling Sting vocally) can’t understand why she’s less than thrilled to see him.
No wonder Frances McNamee as Meg Dawson sings the tango-tinged warning If You Ever See Me Talking To A Sailor. She’s dependent on no one and is a self-made businesswoman now. McNamee’s powerful vocals match her acting prowess. There’s still chemistry between the two despite separation – they’re especially marvellous in When We Dance. Another of McNamee’s outstanding duets includes one with her younger self in the poignantly lovely August Winds.
Jackie and Peggy White, the yard foreman and his wife played by Joe McGann and Charlie Hardwick, anchor the musical with their tour de force portrayal of a couple devoted to each other through thick and thin. We meet more shipyard workers – dogged, socialist-spouting union leader Billy Thompson (Joe Caffery); bookish carpenter Adrian Sanderson (Charlie Richmond) and drunk builder Davey Harrison (Kevin Wathen). There’s Celtic-flavoured folk, choral-like arrangements and West-End show-worthy tunes including the rousing, foot-stomping anthem We Got Now’t Else and the ballad What Say You, Meg? The ex-Police man’s beautiful title song is one of his most evocative and spiritual, presented in a transcendent setting like an epiphany.
When top brass and a certain baroness (a not-so-thinly veiled dig at Thatcher) tell them no one’s going to buy the almost completed ship Utopia because of the cost (meaning it will be scrapped), the workers basically give them a two-finger salute as they have their own agenda, no matter how improbable (but idealistic) one of the plans is.
The set by 59 Productions is mostly video projection (shipyard, church, pub, rows of terrace homes) except for a metal walkway, but it’s phenomenal. You’re up on cranes and scaffolding with the Utopia (welding sparks flying) against the ever-changing skyline, waves crashing. The Last Ship – a story of people fighting for survival in a mix of pride and politics – is glorious. Sting’s crafted a fitting thank you to his father, mother, hometown, to workers everywhere – and to the shipbuilders who created those ‘mountains of steel making their way to the sea’.
Words Rhonda Lee Reali
Photo Mark Douet