WHILE GENERIC, A SINCERE SHIP HARDLY CAPSIZES
The Last Ship, now in a shakedown cruise at Bank of America Theatre, joins a proud list of fervent tributes to blue-collar Brits. These salutes to stolid survival honor underdog heroes fighting hard times and mean bosses. Invariably, they take a dramatic stand, however doomed or demented—Billy Elliott, The Full Monty, Brassed Off, Kinky Boots, The World’s End, and Calendar Girls to cite a few. In this Broadway-bound reclamation musical, superstar Sting reaches into his childhood near Newcastle-upon-Tyne to recreate a lost world: the endangered Swan Hunter shipyard in the northeast English port of Wallsend. Here ships would grow “until they blotted out the sun.”
Or until the Koreans built cheaper ones and the workers became redundant.
Right now Sting’s thing—a musical far more sincere than convincing—is a muddled masterwork where symbolism trumps probability. But, no question, its heart sprawls like its score.
The book, by Brian Yorkey and ex-Chicago playwright John Logan, views this proletariat struggle through the eyes of prodigal son Gideon Fletcher (charismatic Michael Esper), a runaway dreamer who became a sailor rather than, as his harsh dad desired, a shipbuilder. Returning to Wallsend after fifteen years of literal drifting, he finds a lot of unfinished business: A shipyard which can’t be salvaged and will soon be scrap; unprocessed memories of his dead father; friendships cut short by Gideon’s ill-considered escape; and, above all, his unconsummated yearning for Meg Dawson (spitfire Rachel Tucker).
There’s a new development, however, and it’s no memory: Meg is engaged to the ship-builder’s henchman Arthur Milburn (stalwart Aaron Lazar) and she has a son, 15-year-old Tom (spunky Collin Kelly-Sordelet), the son that Gideon never knew he left behind. (But now Gideon can teach his teenage spawn boxing and waltzing in “The Night the Pugilist Learned How to Dance”; alas, it doesn’t make the unintended neglect any less regrettable.)
Besides reigniting his passion for Meg, Gideon’s semi-redemptive return forces him—out of sheer solidarity with the beleaguered Wallsenders—to join Tom and Arthur and commit to the trade his forebears plied. Refusing to face the death of a way of life, Gideon and the townsfolk are inspired by a scheme partially funded by the local priest’s creative embezzling. This dying prelate (twinkling Fred Applegate) wants to leave one lasting legacy: The workers will storm the shuttered shipyard and build one last ship to circumnavigate the globe and proclaim their craft to the world.
It seems a pipe dream out of Eugene O’Neill—a community’s crack-brained scheme to illegally construct a ship without a company or a buyer, then sail it anywhere until imminent impoverishment makes them scuttle it. Unlike Billy Elliot’s ballet, The Full Monty‘s Full Monty or Calendar Girls’ geriatric calendar, this desperate measure is the kind of empty gesture that’s supposedly too romantic to seem contrived. (But how readily we embrace fantasies we don’t have to live!)
Wellsend’s crusade to snatch victory from defeat by launching one last ship consumes the story. Happily, it also fuels anthems magnificently belted out by the shipwrights, riveters, welders, iron-makers, keel-haulers, and their faithful females. Sting’s serviceable songs range from the soaring title number to the self-descriptive romp “When We Dance” and funerary “Hymn” to the women’s arch chorus of “Mrs. Dees’ Rant.”
Committed to making this a conventional musical and not a live jukebox, an un-waspish Sting delivers no generic rock score but a pretty pastiche of waltzes, two-steps, and even a raunchy rumba. The result is a supple mix of artful duets (“August Winds,” “So to Speak”), bittersweet numbers “(“We’ve Got Naught Else”), and winsome ballads (Gideon’s hopeful “And Yet”). Despite the accents, the lyrics are as comprehensible as they are supple and well-targeted.
Just as comfortingly familiar, but not yet engrossing, are the familiar types who make Wellsend a rather generic seaside storybook: the firebranding Marxist ship’s steward; the wee priest; the bibulous bargirl; a valiant foreman; and the colorful pub crawlers in this “island of souls.”
Director Joe Mantello works his usual wonders: The perfectly-cast leads and impeccable ensemble honor the driven dreams that few but Sting capture so completely. His “act of artistic rejuvenation,” as author Logan puts it, accomplishes itself; and judging from the opening night ovations it inspires the audience too.
photos by Joan Marcus
The Last Ship
Pre-Broadway World Premiere
Bank of America Theatre, 18 West Monroe St.
scheduled to end on July 13, 2014
for tickets, call (800) 775-2000 or visit www.BroadwayInChicago.com
for more info, visit www.TheLastShip.com
for info on this and other Chicago Theater, visit www.TheatreinChicago.com
