It’s not every day there’s a queue outside Leith
Dockers Club, On a crisp December afternoon last year, however, there’s a whiff
of excitement among the gathered throng. Inside, the main bar is awash with
afternoon drinkers indifferent to what’s going on elsewhere in terms of the
celebrity in the house, preferring to play dominoes instead. The main function
room, however, is packed out, with every row of seats filled by people eager to
see a performance by a very special guest.
That guest is Sting, the artist formerly known as Gordon
Sumner, but whose original name has been all but forgotten now after more than forty
years as a high profile musician still probably best remembered for his stint
fronting The Police. Following the band’s days of chart-bound global success
playing jaunty punky-reggae hits such as Roxanne, Message in a Bottle and Don’t
Stand So Close to Me, Sting’s early solo back catalogue saw him experiment with
glossy 1980s jazz, an album of Kurt Weill songs and latterly Elizabethan-inspired
lute music.
As an actor, Sting made early appearances in Franc
Roddam’s film of Quadrophenia and Chris Petit’s existential road movie, Radio
On. He appeared in the film version of Dennis Potter’s controversial TV play,
Brimstone and Treacle, and scored a hit from the soundtrack with a cover of
Spread a Little Happiness, taken from 1920s musical Mr Cinders. He also appeared
in David Lynch’s film version of Frank Herbert’s science-fiction epic, Dune.
More recently, Sting showed up in Lock, Stock and Two
Smoking Barrels, and has appeared as himself in shows ranging from The Vicar of
Dibley to Life’s Too Short. And now here he is in Leith Docker’s Club on a
chilly December afternoon, walking unassumingly down the aisle before stepping
onto what is possibly the smallest stage he’s been on for four decades.
“What
time’s the bingo on?” asks Sting as he straps on an acoustic guitar.
“Are you
calling the numbers?” shouts some wag from the middle row.
Sting grins.
“It’s been a
lot of years since I’ve been in a social club,” he says in a gentle Geordie
voice. “But I did serve my apprenticeship in places like Leith Dockers.”
Sting is here to launch The Last Ship, the musical play
he’s written about the shipyards he grew up beside in Wallsend in Tyne and Wear.
The show focuses on Gideon Fletcher, a Wallsend native who grows up in the
shadow of the shipyard, but wants something different. When he returns after
being away for fourteen years, the shipyard is in decline, and he recognises
that something must be done to build a future for the community he left behind.
Given that Sting too saw a life beyond Wallsend, The Last Ship is both a labour
of love and something of a prodigal’s return for him.
“It’s a story very close to my heart,” he says in a
side-room of Leith Docker’s Club after playing a handful of songs from the
show. “I lived within spitting distance of the shipyard, and as a kid that’s
where I thought I’d end up, but I wanted something different from that.”
Sting remembers seeing a Rolls Royce with the Queen
Mother inside, who was visiting the shipyard.”
“The show isn’t autobiographical exactly,” he says, “but
there are elements in there.”
While both a love story and a tale of family tensions
as much as an elegy to the shipyards, Sting was influenced as well by reading
about events during the 1980 strike in the Gdansk shipyard in Poland led by
Lech Walesa, which led to the setting up of the trade union, Solidarity. Closer
to home, the iconic Clydeside work-in fronted by the late Jimmy Reid was also
an influence.
After opening on home turf at the Newcastle-based
Northern Stage theatre, The Last Ship sails into Edinburgh tonight as part of a
UK tour that also visits Glasgow next week. This is something of a second life
for The Last Ship, which in its original form appeared in Chicago and on
Broadway in 2014, and drew material from an album released by Sting in 2013.
The roots of the piece actually date all the way back to Sting’s 1991 album,
The Soul Cages, which focused on the shipyards and the death of his parents. There
is an element of this before Sting performs a song from The Last Ship called
Dead Man’s Boots, when he becomes emotional while talking about his father.
“Dad visited me,” he says.
This first UK production of The Last Ship features a new
book by Northern Stage artistic director Lorne Campbell, the Edinburgh-born
former associate director of the city’s Traverse Theatre. Design for the show
comes from internationally renowned multi-media auteurs 59 Productions. The
company’s state-of-art work was last seen in Edinburgh lighting up the
landscape during the Hogmanay programme as well as assorted large-scale opening
events for Edinburgh International Festival.
At Leith Dockers, former Auf Wiedersehn, Pet actor
Jimmy Nail, who appeared in The Last Ship on Broadway, was supposed to show
face, but never appeared. At that point Nail was scheduled to do the UK tour,
but was shortly replaced by Joe McGann. As the eldest of the Liverpool-born
McGann brothers – all well-known actors – he too will bring his experience of
living in a once thriving port to the show.
As a fanfare for the common man and woman, The Last
Ship’s themes chime with the likes of Billy Elliot and Brassed Off. As films, these
are probably the most high-profile celebrations of working-class communities
rising above their attempted decimation at the hands of 1980s Thatcherism. With
both adapted for the stage to considerable success, musical theatre might well
be regarded as Thatcher’s accidental legacy.
In the songs too, judging by the few played live in
Leith Dockers, there are unconscious shades there of the sort of socially aware
work produced by former Animals keyboardist and fellow Tynesider Alan Price
during the 1970s. While Sting stamps his personality on his original
compositions, there’s recognition that they need to serve the play’s narrative.
The result, according to the show’s producer Karl Sydow earlier, is “some of the most beautiful music ever
written for theatre.”
Following his performance, a member of the audience and
ship-building veteran presented Sting with a book, Voices of Leith Dockers. It
is the sort of stories contained with the book that fire The Last Ship.
“What I want,” Sting says, “is to look at what happens
when our work disappears, and our community disappears, and to celebrate the
importance of that community through trying to keep it going. It’s our work
that gives us dignity, and once that has gone, what is there left? The Last
Ship is all about community.”
Back in the bar, the afternoon drinkers are getting
stuck into the leftover buffet. A couple of guys get selfies with Sting when he
comes out of the side room. Sting is happy to pose awhile before he leaves, and
Leith Dockers Club goes back to normal, sailing into late afternoon as Sting
prepares to move on to the next port of call.
The Last Ship, Festival Theatre, Edinburgh,
tonight-June 16; Theatre Royal, Glasgow, June 18-23.
The Herald, June 12th 2018
ends
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