sailing off to save their souls
by
Douglas Messerli
Lorne
Campbell (libretto), Sting (music and lyrics) The Last Ship / the production
I saw was at the Ahmanson Theatre, Los Angeles, on January 22, 2020.
Watching
Sting’s The Last Ship last night at the Ahmanson Theatre on Grand Avenue
in Los Angeles, I tried to comprehend why this loveable and politically-charged
musical was not a Broadway hit when it first appeared in New York and elsewhere
in 2014.
Sting himself, who tried to save the
failing show at the Neil Simon Theater, should have been enough to bring in the
crowds, and, indeed, it did buoy up the production for a short period before it
finally closed.
Perhaps, moreover, the original plot of
the libretto by John Logan and Brian Yorkey was a bit too complex, particularly
when it came to the political issues in Britain during the tyrannical rule of
Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s—devastating not only the shipyard workers, but
the country’s mine workers and other ordinary laborers—was not something US New
Yorkers were very aware or even caring about, particularly given the cost of
their theater tickets.
The version I saw featured a rewritten
book by Lorne Campbell, featuring a new cast who had toured the United Kingdom
before settling into a fairly long run at Toronto’s Princess of Wale’s Theatre.
Campbell apparently trimmed the work down, along with Sting refocusing the
ending less on the male shipyard workers than upon their mothers, wives, and
lovers.
As Los Angeles Times writer
Jessica Geltstaff reported: “This winsome landscape is dominated by women like
the ones Sting grew up with and Campbell came to know while living and working
in post-industrial Newcastle. These communities are held together and driven by
their women,” Campbell says.
But there are larger issues at work
here which drive this creation into a different world than the typical Broadway
musical, and which might have alienated the supposedly sophisticated New York
audiences.
First of all, with 19 original songs,
and three reprises this “musical” might almost be described as an opera instead
of a musical—or at least an operetta. And then there are Sting’s nearly miraculous
lyrics, embracing everything from Karl Marx, a discussion of how the pugilist
hero, Gideon Fletcher (a wonderful Oliver Saville), learned how to dance, to
quotes from Lewis Carroll, Dylan Thomas, and various other poets—mostly uttered
by the most unlikely intellect of the shipyard workers, Adrian Sanderson (Marc
Akinfolarin)—discussions of the constellations (“It’s Not the Same Moon”), meditations
on death (“Dead Man’s Boots”), saucy sexual numbers ("Mrs. Dee’s Rant," brilliantly
performed by Orla Gormley), as well as lovely ballads such as “All This Time”
(sung by Sting and Jackie Morrison).
Almost every character in this work gets
the opportunity to show their powerful musical talents—and they all perform
quite brilliantly, as if we were almost encountering a cabaret show linked by
short spoken episodes.
And then there’s the music, the
startling eclectic score sweeping up so many different composers such as Richard
Rodgers, Marc Blitzstein, Kurt Weill, and others. A good listener simply
becomes overwhelmed. Poetic meditations alternate with full cast renditions of
numbers such as “Hadaway (Out of Your Tiny Minds?") sung by Davey Harrison (Matt
Corner) and cast.
In short, I believe it is because Sting’s
work is stuffed with so much literary and musical heritage that it simply
overwhelmed some of its earlier audiences.
Here in Los Angeles, with a sold-out crowd,
everyone seemed to love this event, even the two women who sat next to me, guessing
I was an-on-aisle reviewer, almost begging during the intermission for me to
love it.
Well, I did love it and told them so. And
for the first time in ages, long hating the tradition of necessary standing
ovations, I too stood up and heartily applauded.
The problem with The Last Ship is
its own intelligence, its seriousness, its cleverness, the prolificacy of its
composer’s sources, and the depth of feeling that he has imbued upon this work.
Would that all US musical conceptions had these flaws.
Los Angeles is fortunate to begin a new
touring version of this significant work. I truly think that its later venues
in San Francisco, Washington, D.C., and Detroit might find equally appreciative
viewers—not because of their innocence or the possibility of their being rubes,
but because of their contemporary sophistication.
In the end, this work seems a perfect
match with the Weimar Republic works being performed across the street at the LA
Philharmonic. Sting’s compositions with The Police have always carried with
them a kind a cabaret sensibility that employs a narrative of sensual love and
danger at the same time. Gideon, the central hero of this work, even suggests
that his has been watching his lover Meg Dawson (Frances McNamee) for the all
the years they were growing up, just as she asserts she was attempting to bring
him closer to her.
Finally, Sting’s work seems almost
Wagnerian, as the whole company, beyond imagination, sail off in the ship of
their own creation, certainly a kind of Flying Dutchman-like ending,
with the men and women of these now-vacant shipyards sailing off to seek their
own souls. They recognize they may lose their souls and even die aboard the
ship they have never before sailed. But they hand over their lives to their new
commander, Gideon, rather than give in to the brutal new British economy. Who
can blame them?
Los
Angeles, January 23, 2020
Reprinted
from USTheater, Opera, and Performance (January 2020).
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