“The Last Ship” officially opened at Broadway’s Neil Simon Theatre on Oct. 26, 2014. The musical, with a book by Tony Award winners John Logan and Brian Yorkey and music and lyrics by Sting, played 29 previews and 105 performances before closing on Jan. 24, 2015. The short-lived production still earned recognition that season — earning four Drama Desk nominations, including Outstanding Music for Sting, and two Tony nominations, including best score for Sting.
“That was a lovely production,” Sting told Broadway News of the 2014 mounting. “I loved it very much, but I always wanted — what I learned from that production, fed into the next iteration.”
A new production, with a book by Lorne Campbell, bowed in London in 2018. Earlier this year, this latest version, with a book revised by Barney Norris, began an acclaimed international tour. Now, it has landed at the Metropolitan Opera for a weeklong run from June 9-14, starring Sting as Jackie White and two-time Grammy winner Shaggy as a new character, the Ferryman.
“The Last Ship” is inspired by Sting’s upbringing in a shipbuilding community in the northeast of England. Sting plays Jackie, the shipyard foreman whose health is failing just as the town is facing the disappearance of its shipyard. The musical is Sting’s tribute to the community where he grew up, a people that built great things but were left unknown and the love and loss interwoven into the town and its folk.
Sting is a 17-time Grammy Award winner and a staggering 45-time nominee. And for all of his success in the recording studio and as an iconic musician, this musical still occupies a special piece of his heart. Here, Sting discusses revising “The Last Ship,” creating it on a grander scale and adding his friend Shaggy to the cast.
You’ve been saying that the reason to come back to “The Last Ship” is because the farther you get from your home, the more you want to remember your home and your own story. But in terms of actually revising music, going to a new book writer, what felt unfinished or in need of revision?
Sting: I think this kind of thing is always evolving because I’m still alive. I can do this and look at it and say, “Oh, I learned this in that production. Maybe this could be a different character or this song could belong somewhere else.” It’s like weaving a carpet. There are all kinds of threads, tropes going through the thing. You look at it [and think] , “Maybe we’ll change this.” And while I’m still alive, I can still do that.
