Sting has revealed that performing in his West End musical The Last Ship feels like therapy every night. The 74-year-old singer, born Gordon Sumner in Wallsend, North East England, is set to star as Jackie White, the shipyard foreman, in the production running from September 22 to October 3 at London's Theatre Drury Lane.
A Personal Journey Back to Wallsend
The musical, which Sting first launched over a decade ago, tells a deeply personal story about his hometown. "It's a very personal story about my hometown, which on the surface doesn't sound very glamorous," he explains. "It was a shipyard town between Newcastle and the North Sea, we built the biggest ships in the world. We're famous for that."
Sting recalls watching thousands of men walk to work every morning, wondering if that was his destined path. "So it's really an energy for a way of life that has gone, the government allowed it to be closed, betrayed the community, and that's the story, but it's also woven with a love story, tension between fathers and sons."
Blending Fact with Fiction
The musical mixes biographical elements with fiction. Sting reflects on his relationship with his father, who wanted him to pursue a technical education. "He did not understand why I wanted to go to a grammar school and learn Latin. I could not articulate why I wanted to go to grammar school. He asked me if I wanted to be a priest. I said no, I just wanted something different."
Sting adds: "I did not want to work in the shipyard, I didn't want to work in the coal mine at the other end of the town. I wanted a bigger life than the one that was being offered."
Therapeutic Elements
Delving deeper, Sting says: "In many ways it's a kind of therapy, because my childhood wasn't particularly happy. I was brought up in a surreal industrial environment with a difficult family, and so going back there was a little painful. But I now appreciate what a gift it was, that I was brought up somewhere with powerful symbolism – a giant shipyard at the end of the street, the river, the sea, the church."
Constant Refinement
Ever the perfectionist, Sting insists the musical is never finished. "It's never finished in my opinion, I'm constantly tinkering with it, sometimes radically, sometimes just incrementally, but I will continue working on it forever. It's a fascinating organic living thing, it's not like we're reproducing a museum artefact."
He adds that changes happen every night: "Little musical changes, arrangements, lines that change every night. It's kind of improvised."
A Life Transformed
From his humble beginnings in a terraced house with an outside toilet, Sting rose to fame with The Police, scoring six number-one albums with hits like Message in a Bottle and Walking on the Moon. His solo career has yielded 21 top-40 albums in the UK, and his estimated net worth is £320 million, with properties including an estate in Italy and a Wiltshire home with an 800-acre garden.
Despite his success, Sting remains driven. "Like all of us, you try and find meaning in life. Your life is not just random. I've had a pretty extraordinary life and a very fortunate life. So, in a way, I want to pay back to where I come from, the debt, an emotional debt, because that community made me who I am."
Emotional Connection
Sting believes his parents are watching the show every night. "When I perform this play, the spirits of my parents are flying around the stage. So it is very emotional for me. My parents were very young when they had me, they had no idea how to bring me up at all, but now I write about them as they're my kids, so it's reconciliation of a lot of different emotional challenges and strains that gets a catharsis in a theatrical setting."
The new production features songs by Sting including Island of Souls, All This Time, and When We Dance, as well as new material, with a new book by Barney Norris and a company of over 50.
