THE LAST SHIP is a new musical with an original score by 16-time Grammy Award winner Sting. This Broadway premiere features direction by two-time Tony Award winner Joe Mantello (Wicked), a book by Tony Award winner John Logan (Red) and Pulitzer Prize winner Brian Yorkey (Next to Normal), and choreography by Olivier Award winner Steven Hoggett (Once).
THE LAST SHIP is set in the English seafaring town of Wallsend, a close-knit community where life has always revolved around the local shipyard and the hardworking men who construct magnificent vessels with tremendous pride. But Gideon Fletcher dreams of a different future. He sets out to travel the world, leaving his life and his love behind. When Gideon returns home 15 years later, he finds the shipyard's future in grave danger and his childhood sweetheart engaged to someone else. As the men of Wallsend take their future into their own hands and build a towering representation of the shared dream that defines their existence, Gideon realizes that he left behind more than he could have ever imagined.
THE LAST SHIP is a portrait of a community so bound together by passion, faith and tradition, they'll stop at nothing to preserve the only life they've ever known.
Too realistic to be a fable and too incredible not to be jangled by the plot holes (How do the men get into the guarded, fenced shipyard every day? How are the materials for the ship brought in? Where the heck are they all sailing off to?) The Last Ship is soul-nourishing as a concert piece but only fitfully convincing as a total work of theater.
When the muscular ensemble is tearing into Sting's rueful ballads or jaunty barroom reels, you almost forget that the narrative stakes are exceedingly attenuated-unemployed shipwrights in a northern English town occupy a decommissioned factory to build one final vessel as an act of defiant solidarity. It's a nice gesture, a symbolic blow for the working man priced out of his profession, but book writers John Logan and Brian Yorkey don't quite establish what the lads hope to achieve-beyond a chance to drill their workplace shanty 'We've Got Now't Else' into our limbic system.
2014 | Broadway |
Original Broadway Production Broadway |
Year | Ceremony | Category | Nominee |
---|---|---|---|
2015 | Drama Desk Awards | Outstanding Choreography | Steven Hoggett |
2015 | Drama Desk Awards | Outstanding Music | Sting |
2015 | Drama Desk Awards | Outstanding Orchestrations | Rob Mathes |
2015 | Drama Desk Awards | Outstanding Sound Design in a Musical | Brian Ronan |
2015 | Outer Critics Circle Awards | Outstanding Book of a Musical | The Last Ship |
2015 | Outer Critics Circle Awards | Outstanding New Broadway Musical | The Last Ship |
2015 | Theatre World Awards | Theatre World Award | Collin Kelly-Sordelet |
2015 | Tony Awards | Best Orchestrations | Rob Mathes |
2015 | Tony Awards | Best Original Score (Music and/or Lyrics) Written for the Theatre | Sting |
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