Superstar Sting’s first musical, The Last Ship, visits Birmingham this month. What’s On caught up with him to find out more about a show that’s based around a subject particularly close to his heart...

In 2011, it was confirmed that Grammy Award-winning musician Gordon Sumner, better known by his stage name of Sting, was working on his first musical. Now, in 2018, that musical, entitled The Last Ship, is setting sail on a UK theatre tour.

Initially inspired by his 1991 album, The Soul Cages, and his own childhood experiences, The Last Ship tells the story of how a close-knit community deals with the closure of the Swan Hunter shipyard and the demise of the shipbuilding industry in Tyne and Wear.

“I was born literally within spitting distance of the shipyard,” says Sting. “I thought that’s where I’d end up because all my family worked there and all of my neighbours worked there - but I didn’t want that; I wanted to leave. I escaped and became a musician, but at some point in my life I had to come back, like a salmon who has to go back to the spawning ground to figure out who he is.”

Receiving two Tony nominations for Best Original Score and Best Orchestrations, The Last Ship features some of Sting’s best-loved songs: Island Of Souls, All This Time and When We Dance. Despite being set in Newcastle, the show premiered in Chicago in the summer of 2014, and then moved to the Neil Simon Theatre on Broadway.

“When most plays start out, you think, ‘Well, if it ever gets to Broadway, it will be a miracle’, so I just started there and worked backwards! I live in New York, I knew a producer who liked the idea of the story, and the theatre was just down the road from where I live. But then I thought it deserved to be seen where it comes from, and that’s the north of England.”

The ensemble cast is led by Coronation Street, West End and Broadway star Richard Fleeshman as Gideon. Charlie Hardwick, best known for her role as Val Pollard in Emmerdale, plays Peggy, Joe McGann (Elf The Musical and The Upper Hand) is Jackie and Frances McNamee, who recently starred in Big Fish in the West End, takes on the role of Meg.

“I’ve got a fabulous cast of northern actors who understand it in their bones, and it’s an emotional rollercoaster ride. I think the play’s themes will resonate with people in the north of England because it’s really about the industry and the closing of factories and coal mines and shipyards and what happens to communities when they’re robbed of their identity because the work they do is being taken away. That’s the serious side of it. It’s also a love story, it has some big production numbers and it’s an entertaining evening. It’s emotional and serious.”

The musical is a constant work in progress, despite having been brought to the stage countless times. “For me, art is never finished. You’re always tinkering with it, always changing your mind about things - so I will keep tinkering as long as I can, until they lock me out. That’s what I do. 

“Since Broadway, it’s become more political because it’s more specific about the actual politics of the time. On Broadway we kind of glossed over that a little more. The story is a little simpler, there are fewer strands - I think it was probably too complicated on Broadway - but I’m very happy with the way it’s developed.

“The Last Ship is a thank you to the community that formed me; it’s a way of paying an emotional debt to the people who brought me up. The characters are either people who existed or composites of people who existed, or people who I knew or people who I've just made up but who’re drawn from reality. People have asked if it’s biographical for me. There are elements of my own life in there, but it’s certainly not my story. There are elements of my own journey.”

Being the principle songwriter, lead singer and bassist for new wave rock band The Police from 1977 to 1986, as well as boasting an immensely successful and ongoing solo career, Sting is certainly no stranger to songwriting. “I’ve always been interested in writing narrative songs, songs that tell a story, and this is just a larger canvas. The difficulty is that each song has to advance the story. You can’t have a static song, and that’s a very hard discipline. Every song has to fight for its life - every line, every word. It’s very demanding, very exacting, but I’ve had more fun doing this than almost anything else I've done in my life. There has also been some interest from some very, very influential filmmakers, whose names will remain anonymous…”

So would he be keen to embark on a second musical adventure? “I can’t imagine anything would be as personal as this, but having got my feet wet, as it were, I'd probably have another go at it. But you know, I have this other job where I make records and sing for money.”

Due to be released on 20 April, Sting has produced an album with Jamaican music icon Shaggy that reflects the duo’s mutual love of Jamaica. “Everyone loves Shaggy, and it’s just a surprise. For me, the most important element in music is surprise. He and I met and did a reggae record together, which no one was expecting.”

While a Shaggy collaboration is indeed a surprise, what isn’t a surprise is to find that The Police will not be reforming any time soon. “Everything we set out to achieve, we achieved tenfold. You can’t step on the same river twice. That’s just an exercise in nostalgia, and I'm not terribly nostalgic - I'm living now. I’m curious about now and what’s going to happen tomorrow. But going back? I've been there.”

The Last Ship stops off at the New Alexandra Theatre, Birmingham, from Monday 16 to Saturday 21 April.

Interview by Lauren Foster