SEIZE THE MEANS OF PRODUCTION: THE MUSICAL!

It’s a homecoming of sorts. After a conspicuously unsuccessful Broadway run, a heavily-rebuilt version of Sting‘s shipbuilders-go-Cervantes musical The Last Ship has docked at Northern Stage in Newcastle upon Tyne, the composer’s hometown, which is where it should have been produced in the first place. The names of the Broadway production’s bookwriters have disappeared from the poster, and the book is by Lorne Campbell, Northern Stage’s artistic director, who also directs the show. The poster image is an actual stained-glass window from Newcastle’s Catholic cathedral. There’s an entirely new cast, including – thank God – no Jimmy Nail, who withdrew from the production at the beginning of the year, a suitably gritty shipyard set and stunning projections from 59 Productions, an impeccable but small (five musicians plus the musical director) folk-rock band tucked behind a corner of the stage, and – inevitably, given the composer – a slightly smug air of shut-up-this-is-good-for-you worthiness hovering over every word.

If Sting sets your teeth on edge – and you’d have good reason – take a deep breath: the impetus behind this project does appear to be thoroughly heartfelt (“sincere” is not an easy word to apply to someone whose public pronouncements are so often so sanctimonious). You may quite justifiably find it (a lot) less than admirable that he, already a millionaire many times over, accepted a seven-digit cheque from a dictator in return for playing a private concert, particularly given that his defence for having done so was singularly unconvincing. You may, also quite justifiably, find the cognitive dissonance inherent in a multimillionaire holding a social-consciousness summit at his Tuscan estate hilarious, at least in a just-threw-up-in-my-mouth-a-little sort of way. You may find it staggering, after the unpleasantness about the whole Uzbekistan thing, that he still chooses to give private audiences to such delightful people, albeit only (again) in exchange for very large amounts of money. I have a (very) short list of people in the arts whose public behaviour is so appalling/unpleasant/hypocritical that I’m reluctant to spend money on their work, and Sting is certainly on it; on the other hand, word from friends in New York who saw the brief Broadway run was quite positive, the reviews were intriguing, and some of the score, on the evidence of the Broadway cast recording, is very strong indeed. And, God help me, as a longstanding, fully-paid-up musical theatre geek, I was curious, so I gritted my teeth and paid up, and made the trek up north to Newcastle with an open mind.

And a lot of it, to be fair, is very, very good indeed. Set in the mid-1980s and pitched by the (very, very sparingly-used) narrator as something between wish-fulfillment and what-might-have-been, the show’s story is an odd but (mostly) effective blend of Karl Marx and Don Quixote set in a declining shipyard which finds itself on the verge of bankruptcy when the multimillion-pound contract of sale for the one order on their books falls through just before the ship is due for completion. Faced with the imminent loss of their jobs, and having been told no help will be forthcoming from the (Thatcher) government, the yard’s workers embark on a quixotic socialist Grand Gesture: they Seize The Means of Production – that is, the shipyard – and erect a barricade, and aim to complete the ship and launch it into the Tyne, partly as a last monument to their dying way of life and partly simply to épate la bourgeoisie by ending the shipyard’s life, and their own careers, in a final blaze of glory.

Yes, in case you were wondering, someone does shout “rage against the dying of the light”; there are also on-the-nose allusions (sometimes slightly too on-the-nose) to Cervantes and Marx and Engels in Campbell’s book, and this is very definitely a show that wears its politics on its sleeve. The decline-of-industrial-Wallsend side of the show’s storyline is more or less a predictable dockyard melodrama, right down to the untimely-death-from-an-industry-related-terminal-disease scene and the subsequent grieving-widow-transcends-her-grief-to-save-the-workers plot twist. Those are spoilers, but you’ll be three steps ahead of the plot all the way through, and while the writing succumbs to nearly every working-class cliché in the book, the actors carry it all off with tremendous conviction. Sting’s score exists largely in a kind of musical hinterland between Kurt Weill and Lindisfarne; that’s a richer seam than you might think, but it’s also absolutely the sound you’d probably expect from an 80s-set determinedly left-wing working-class musical whose book more than nods towards Brecht and agitprop. You won’t be surprised, apart from by the astonishing set-design, but you will probably be moved.

Just as predictable, but also rather less effective, is the love story that – of course – is set against the closing of the shipyard. This concerns Gideon, because of course this show lays the symbolism on with a trowel, who ran away from Wallsend seventeen years ago in search of adventure/new horizons/a better life/a better selection of Docs and knit caps than he could find in any shop in Eldon Square/an escape from his abusive alcoholic father, and who comes back to clear out his (now-)late father’s house to discover that Meg, the girlfriend he left in Wallsend when he skipped town on a merchant ship, now has a sixteen-year-old daughter (Ellen, named after a local political heroine, again presumably because this show lays the symbolism on with a trowel). Gideon wants Meg back, Meg isn’t having any, Ellen wants to run away to London with her socialist rock band to make a record, and you can probably guess right now how this half of the plot is resolved.

The love-story side of the show is never exactly bad; actually, the mother-daughter scenes between Frances McNamee‘s Meg and Katie Moore’s Ellen are among the best things in the show (Moore also doubles, very effectively, as the narrator). Gideon’s big love-song, “What Say You, Meg?”, is meltingly lovely. That the romance never quite catches fire is simply down to the unfortunate fact that Gideon is by far the least interesting character on the stage. Meg, a single parent who clawed her way up from a teen pregancy to build a secure life for herself and her daughter, is simply a far more compelling figure than a man who ran away from home at seventeen, never looked back, and never really articulates why he stayed away for so long when he promised Meg he’d return. As Gideon, Richard Fleeshman – who, thank God, has learned to act since Ghost – is a pleasant enough presence, and he sings very well, although perhaps it isn’t wise to allow him to spend so much of his music imitating the composer’s vaguely transatlantic drawl. The trouble is, he more or less fades into the background next to Frances McNamee’s fiery Meg. That’s largely the fault of the writing – Gideon’s music mostly tends towards lovelorn/wistful ballads of regret, while Meg’s entrance number, a razor-sharp put-down called “If You Ever See Me Talking to a Sailor”, is a furious, rum-fuelled answer to Kurt Weill’s Tango-Ballade, which McNamee slams into the back wall of the theatre with the force of an Atlantic hurricane. Of course Meg is a more compelling presence than Gideon; she’s drawn in a far more colourful musical vocabulary. Despite his very large role in the show’s plot, Gideon’s stature is further diminished in comparison with Joe McGann‘s salt-of-the-earth foreman Jackie White, who – at least until midway through the second act – carries the shipyard side of the plot and who is musicalised via a series of stirring protest anthems. When Fleeshman is given something a bit more dramatic to get his teeth into, he delivers – “The Night the Pugilist Learned How to Dance”, in which he tells his newfound daughter how he learned to dance to woo her mother, is his best moment by far – but he can only do so much with a character who is mostly written in flat greys.

Thankfully, while the romantic half of the plot sometimes threatens to bring the show to a juddering halt, it’s never too long before we’re back in the shipyard. The shipbuilders’ gradual move from anger to stunned acceptance to defiant resistance is movingly drawn, Joe McGann gives a very fine performance indeed as their foreman, and Charlie Hardwick is even better as Jackie’s wife Peggy, whose own act of defiance buys the shipbuilders the time they need to finish and launch the ship. Yes, that’s also a spoiler – but again, you’ll have worked out within ninety seconds of the lights going down where the plot is going to end up. A late-in-Act Two speech from Katie Moore’s narrator which attempts to put the shipbuilders’ quest into a wider social context is certainly didactic and arguably preachy and (yes) a little smug, but it’s also undeniably effective: by name-checking protests ranging from the Jarrow march to the aftermath of the Parkland shooting, Campbell effectively suggests that sometimes Grand Futile Gestures can ultimately carry considerable weight, and this does add an extra dimension to the final scene. There’s a lot of good in this show, but – as I said – few surprises; having said that, those protest songs, Campbell’s staging, the superb performances, and the sometimes breathtaking visual effects are more than enough to hold your attention. The show could easily stand to lose twenty minutes, but that’s a big club these days; there may be (more than) a few moments when your attention will wander, but the finale, when it finally rolls around, is genuinely extremely moving, and includes a visual effect (accomplished via projections) so stunning that my mouth dropped open.

It’s worth, then, swallowing your opinion of the composer and shelling out for a ticket (the run in Newcastle is now over, but the production is touring until July). Not everything in the show works, even after what seems to have been a very thorough overhaul following the Broadway production, but the good far outweighs the bad, the performances are almost all excellent, the set and projections are beautifully evocative, and the last five minutes or so are genuinely thrilling (and yes, what the hell, if someone chooses to record this version of the show I’ll certainly buy it). Frances McNamee, Joe McGann and Charlie Hardwick are worth the cost of the ticket, and so are (most of) the songs and that set; the composer, unfortunately, is still – let’s be kind – a bit of a wanker, but this is showbusiness. You can’t have everything.