Photographs by: Joan Marcus

                          By Eugene Paul

With a vast, overpoweringly produced, literally awesome demonstration of theatrical brawn, the Sting machine has taken on Broadway, no holds barred.  When was the last time you saw crowds outside the theatre dazzled by musicians from the show playing live under the marquee, the star, 63 year old Sting himself, right there in the flesh, singing in the street for his incoming customers?  Once inside, the power crowd was there to examine the product.  Sting had thrown down the gauntlet, gunning for his Tony.

He has not stinted. The staggering number of awards earned by Sting and the theatrical coterie he has assembled is also, literally awesome, ranks and ranks of Grammys, Tonys, Emmys, Golden Globes, Oscar nominations, even a Pulitzer, along with more than a hundred backstage entities supporting the forty actors and musicians, plus the ingenious machinery, the technical devices for stage, lighting, effects on an operatic scale, awesome, literally awesome.

The setting for the story of the show is Wallsend, so called because that’s where Hadrian’s Wall ended in the northeast of England, to keep out the barbarians beyond.  It’s where Sting grew up, in that small town which lived around its shipyard and the glamorous ships the men built, a town, a shipyard, a family that has driven Sting’s music all his life, as if culminating in this very show, always deeply personal, always deeply hidden in plain sight, the strains, the stresses always present.  And here they are in one simple tale at the core of this huge effort.

Gideon (Michael Esper) won’t be a slave to the shipyard the way his father is and generations of fathers before him.  Gideon wants the wide world, glittering out there, despite his love for Meg, despite the pull of his ailing father’s need for his help.  Gideon leaves.  And when he returns, the glitter faded, fifteen years later, everything’s the same but everything’s changed.  The shipyard that put bread on the table for generations is closed.  The new owner, an outsider, offers them jobs salvaging scrap, work they scorn.  The men refuse.

Rachel Tucker, Michael Esper and Aaron Lazar                       Photos by Joan Marcus

Meg, (Rachel Tucker) has taken up with Arthur (Aaron Lazar), who now works as foreman for the salvage yard, in love with Meg and a loving parent to her son, Tom (Collin Kelly-Sordelet), the spit of Gideon, giving Gideon even more reason to want to return to the fold, to Meg. And his son. Father-son.  The chain continues. Meg has to choose between her early love for Gideon and her quiet love for Arthur.

Of course, it’s England and in workmen stories – as well as others -- that means a pub, where Meg works.  And somehow, there always seems to be a wise, funny, Catholic priest who’s been there for ages and never lost his Irish brogue. (Sorry, but that’s what these prize winners have given Sting for a book.)  Plus, Gideon’s love/hate relationship with his father who, of course, died two days before Gideon arrived. But the fault lies not with John Logan and Brian Yorkey as book writers, they’ve done their job, written around Sting songs from his collection of hit albums. Sting has fallen into the same pit many a pop, rock, rap multimillion album star who could not see why, when they’ve got all this proven material, a Broadway show couldn’t be built around the goods.  Dollars don’t lie.  Do they?

The emptiness in the center of the show has not been filled by the composer/lyricist.  His songs remain his songs, not the show’s.  Strong themes set up in the story fizzle without follow through to engage us.  Is work a man’s only identity?  Is he nothing without it?  Is a job a life?  Or a sentence?  Is anything more important than love?  Is anything more important than responsibility?  Do you create a new future by creating a grand gesture?  And – for heaven’s sake – where does a priest find millions to underwrite the building of a ship, the last ship? Whose money? Borrowed?  Stolen? For what purpose?  The dignity of a job?  What kind of dignity is that?

These, and others still to be asked, are Sting questions.  He’s a serious man.  He has to answer them.  In dramatic song. Not pastiche.  And the immense father-son bonding, father-son conflict, father-son pain and guilt and love and hate, if that is the real intent of Sting’s show, he has to do it, not simply kiss it off with “Dead Man’s Boots”.

His show is still growing but it is now, more than ever, really up to him, not  a craftsman’s book by John Logan and Brian Yorkey, staggering scenery by David Zinn, he metal skeleton of a massive ship, looming over the bewildering trappings of a busy shipyard and overshadowed by projections of a dark and restless sea. Christopher Akerlind’s lighting design ranges from blue-black and green-black to solid black-black, and Brian Ronan is responsible for the discordant soundscape (in “Shipyard”) of strong men hard at work. Skilled stomping by choreographer Steven Hoggett and endless, deft massaging by director Joe Mantello, wondrous as they all are.  They, ultimately, cannot do his job, with all their gifts. Michael Esper, Rachel Tucker, Collin Kelly-Sordelet, Aaron Lazar, Sally Ann Triplett, Fred Applegate can perform and perform, but it’s his chosen road. Never too late to learn.

The Last Ship. At the Neil Simon Theatre, 250 West 52^nd Street.  Tickets: $55-$147. 877-250-2929 or thelastship.com. 2 hrs, 40 min.