Sting's Score Can't Keep 'The Last Ship' Afloat

‘RIVERDANCE’ REDUX? : Sally Ann Triplett & cast of ‘The Last Ship’ party it up at the pub. Photo: Joan Marcus

THE LAST SHIP
Music & lyrics by Sting
Book by John Logan & Bryan Yorkey
Choreography by John Hoggett
Directed by Joe Mantello
Neil Simon Theatre
250 West 52nd Street
(212-757-8646), www.thelastship.com

By Scott Harrah

Anyone who grew up in the 1980s knows the work of pop-rock legend Sting, from his early years with the Police and classics like “Roxanne” and “Message in a Bottle” to his mega-hit “Every Breath You Take” and more. You couldn’t go anywhere back in the day without hearing 16-time Grammy Award winner Sting on the radio or seeing his electrifying videos on MTV. Unfortunately, pop pedigree doesn’t always translate to the winning ingredients for great musical theater (as Bono and other members of rock royalty with ill-fated recent shows can attest). Sting’s soaring, haunting music and lyrics are not even the problem with the misguided, torpedoed vanity project that is The Last Ship. In fact, Sting’s melodic, cerebral mid-tempo ballads are one of the best things here, but they aren’t enough to keep this lugubrious musical afloat, and the score, although endearing, seems wasted.

The show has good intentions, but everything about this serious saga is bogged down with clichés, much like that old expression “taking coals to Newcastle,” or in this case, Wallsend, a working-class shipping town in northeast England. Sober subject matter is tricky stuff in musical theater. To make a bleak, depressing story work as a Broadway musical, the audience must be offered something that forges an emotional connection. Beyond that, many want to see at least some spectacle (as in Phantom of the Opera) or lavish costumes and historical significance in addition to infectious songs that propel the story forward (such as Les Miserables). What we have here is a barren tale in a non-descript time period, with many well-crafted songs woven into a predictable narrative.

We never see the actual ship being built, not even a part of it, and that is problematic in a show called The Last Ship. There are dreary, dark sets and lighting by David Zinn and Christopher Akerlind (a dimly lit pub, a rusty shipyard and industrial-looking fences), and paper-thin stereotypes for characters, namely out-of-work “blokes,” all hanging out at the local pub, ready to get into fistfights when they aren’t singing about their troubles. There is also the perfunctory curmudgeonly, foul-mouthed, dying Irish priest, Father O’Brien (Fred Applegate), a man who chain-smokes all the time, even in the confession booth.

Although the setting is England, the mood and most of the songs reek of every pandering, “woe-is-me, life-bloody-sucks-let’s-get-drunk” Irish platitude imaginable. In addition, choreographer Steven Hoggett (of Once fame) pours on the ersatz Gaelic footwork with a sledgehammer. In nearly half the production numbers, the cast members start stomping their feet, like some lame attempt to recreate every step from each incarnation of Riverdance. This sort of hokey folk dancing was annoying in the overrated Tony winner Once, and is preposterous here.

Michael Esper plays Gideon, the lost lad of about 30 who has returned to his hometown after 15 years. The father he never got along with has just passed away, and his dad’s profession, shipbuilding, has died as well in the town. Now Gideon wants to get back together with his long-lost love Meg (Rachel Tucker). She has a teenage son, Tom (Collin Kelley-Sordelet) and is wooed to marry Arthur (Aaron Lazar), a man who encourages the unemployed shipbuilders of the town to take jobs he is offering in scrap metal. The shipyard has been closed down, but Father O’Brien convinces the men to try and build one last ship.

It is this clash between the men of hanging on to the past of shipbuilding or selling out to jobs in scrap metal work that creates the tension in the storyline. However, there is no tangible conflict here, certainly not the type that kept the working-class British shoe-factory heroes of the 2013 Tony Award Winner for Best Musical, Kinky Boots, consistently compelling and colorful, thanks to pop icon Cyndi Lauper’s upbeat, Tony-winning pop score and a multitude of outrageous costumes, served up with a sense of whimsy and fun amidst the harsh themes.

Other than the show’s title song, “The Last Ship,” which has two parts and a reprise in Act I and is the finale in Act II, there are no memorable songs. Gideon’s solo “All This Time” and his duet with son Tom, “Ghost Story,” would sound nice on a Sting album, but seem out of place in a musical.

The biggest flaws here are the leaden book by John Logan (I’ll Eat You Last: A Chat with Sue Mengers and Red) and Brian Yorkey (If/Then and Next to Normal) and Joe Mantello’s surprisingly shoddy direction. When the show opened in Chicago earlier this year, some critics noted that the story and specifically the character of Gideon (loosely based on young Sting) needed work because he didn’t have enough of a backstory. As is now, he still doesn’t. All we know is he’s been around the world. Why? To find himself? As a result, we feel little sympathy or much of anything for him.

There are some good performances and great voices regardless. As competent an actor as Michael Esper is, he isn’t charismatic enough to carry a show that badly needs to show us its vital signs to keep audiences interested. Rachel Tucker adds the right amount of sincerity and pathos to Meg, and has a pleasant voice. Also worth noting is Aaron Lazar as Arthur, the responsible man who wants to marry Meg and pleads to her to do just that in the song “What Say You, Meg?”

Collin Kelly-Sordelet is one of the show’s only scene-stealers as Tom. His final scene with his father is truly heartwarming. Finally, Fred Applegate adds as much depth as he can to the cartoonish Father O’Brien. The rest of the cast, a testosterone-and-lager-addled motley crew of tough guys and prosaic portrayals of loud, squawky working-class women, are mostly forgettable because they are so poorly written.

Even worse, there are 25 songs in the final version (three of which are variations of the title track), and several of them should have been cut because they go nowhere and don’t move the action forward. One wonders why Sting didn’t do The Last Ship as a concept album. All his fans would have bought it on iTunes and loved it, and millions of dollars would have been saved, but what we have here is something that lacks the requisite heft for a meaningful stage saga.