\n\u201cI\u2019m at the back there every night, mouthing every syllable, which is an extra burden the poor things have,\u201d says the Grammy Award-winner at the Neil Simon Theatre. \u201cThey know I\u2019m listening.\u201d
\nHearing this, one of the stars, Rachel Tucker, nods and laughs. \u201cIt\u2019s true,\u201d she says. \u201cHe\u2019ll be, \u2018Where was the \u2018t\u2019 in \u2018light?\u2019\u201d
\nSting\u2019s tremendous skills as a songwriter \u2014 not to mention his perfectionist streak \u2014 are both being tested with \u201cThe Last Ship,\u201d which opens Sunday.
\nThe show marks his maiden voyage into composing musical theater and Sting seems tired, but game. Sitting beside Tucker in the theater\u2019s empty seats before a recent preview, he could see the finish line.
\n\u201cIt began as my dream and then became everybody\u2019s,\u201d he says. His lovely, powerfully voiced co-star mouths a \u201cthank you\u201d and bows in his direction.
\n\u201cThe Last Ship\u201d is a semi-autobiographical story about a prodigal son who returns to his northern England shipbuilding town to reclaim the girl he abandoned when he fled years before.
\n\u201cThe imagery of the sea and ships is very fertile. I mean, we came from the sea. Everything came from the sea,\u201d he says. \u201cI just tapped into that. I tapped into my own ancestry and my community, and behold we have a musical.\u201d
\nSting, born Gordon Sumner, drew on his childhood, growing up in Newcastle\u2019s Wallsend neighborhood, near the Swan Hunter shipyards, which built more than 1,600 ships before closing in 1993.
\nThe show\u2019s evocative lyrics are by a master craftsman himself \u2014 \u201cThe roar of the chains and the cracking of timbers\/The noise at the end of the world in your ears.\u201d But comparisons only go so far.
\n\u201cIt\u2019s rooted certainly in my experience and something I know about,\u201d says Sting. \u201cBut we\u2019re not telling a biographical story. There are elements of my life in this thing, but that\u2019s not what we\u2019re doing, I promise you.\u201d
\nThe project began as a CD and PBS concert special before it was turned into a stage version for a pre-Broadway stop in Chicago this summer. Pulitzer Prize and Tony-winning lyricist Brian Yorkey (\u201cNext to Normal\u201d) and Tony-winner John Logan (\u201cRed\u201d) wrote the book, and Tony-winner Joe Mantello (\u201cWicked\u201d) directs. Sting doesn\u2019t appear in it, but he is fully involved in every aspect. He\u2019s in back during every performance, after all.
\nWhile it may mark Sting\u2019s debut as a musical composer, he\u2019s familiar with the stage, having started his musical career in the orchestra pit in Newcastle playing bass for a production of \u201cJoseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.\u201d He\u2019s also been onstage on Broadway in 1989\u2019s revival of \u201cThe Threepenny Opera.\u201d
\nAsked if much had changed since the Chicago run, he turns impish: \u201cIt\u2019s now set in a gay disco. Not a radical change. We just figured it was too butch,\u201d he says, laughing.
\nTucker, a native of the shipbuilding Northern Ireland city of Belfast who plays the object of a love triangle in the show, downloaded Sting\u2019s CD before going on holiday and was transported home.
\n\u201cEvery song I listened to I was like, \u2018That is a story in itself.\u2019 It got me. It brought me home to Belfast,\u201d says the singer, who starred as Elphaba in \u201cWicked\u201d in the West End and is making her Broadway debut. \u201cIt took me home.\u201d
\nWorking with the 16-time Grammy winner who led the seminal band The Police has turned Tucker into a \u201cgiddy 2-year-old.\u201d To get into character, she visited Newcastle, went to the shipyard at Wallsend and even picked up a rivet from the ground as a keepsake.
\n\u201cIt\u2019s a complete dream come true,\u201d she says.
\nSting describes his hometown as \u201cpoetic\u201d and \u201cbizarre,\u201d filled with huge hulks of steel, like industrial dinosaurs. \u201cI think it fed my muse as a child, living next to a shipyard, living with those people and those strange, surreal giant artifacts,\u201d he said.
\nHe insists he isn\u2019t romanticizing the shipyards, which he studiously avoided, as toxic and dangerous. The Swan Hunter shipyards had one of the worst safety records in western Europe, but Sting saw honor in its workers.
\n\u201cThe pride those men and women took in the ships they built was palpable. You could point to the end of the street and say, \u2018We built that with our hands.\u2019 Modern society doesn\u2019t have that. We don\u2019t build things,\u201d he says. \u201cWe\u2019re honoring the pride of that community and the joy of that community.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"