The Last Ship Tickets

This is a poignant, moving and romantic tale of childhood sweethearts and the adults they turned into. It's by Sting, who wrote the music and lyrics. It's also a celebration of one of the greatest tales of the tough industrial 1970s, set in a Scottish shipyard threatened with closure and based on a fascinating true story. Welcome to The Last Ship, both heartfelt and empowering. Is it coming to London? The rumours are rife, so fingers crossed!

According to the Guardian, The Last Ship is “A stirring musical” containing some of the “most thrilling choral writing I've heard in a British musical.” The Sunday Mirror calls it “poignant and powerful, stirring stuff from Sting”. The Daily Telegraph praises the set, saying “the impressive, surprisingly versatile shipyard set is transformed from moment to moment by the fabulous use of projected images, still and moving”. And The Stage says this is a “heartbreaking, uplifting, intimate and universal” show. The signs are looking good.

The plot of Sting's new musical echoes real life experiences of the former Clyde shipyard workers. Several of them have seen the musical, where a shipyard faces closure and the workers decide to take control by finishing off the construction of a half-built ship. It actually happened back in 1971 when the famous Upper Clyde Shipbuilders, the UCS, staged a work-in in their thousands, the diametric opposite of a strike.

In a situation that mirrored the future Thatcher years, when the UK's coal industry was broken forever, Edward Heath's Conservative government had decided not to save what they called 'lame duck' industries. They were determined to stop the funding for the UCS and make between six and eight and a half thousand Scottish shipyard workers redundant. UCS took over and the world watched.

The musician Sting also came from humble beginnings, brought up near the Wallsend shipyards. He was a huge fan of UCS leader, the late Jimmy Reid, and his musical is all about the comradeship, the communities getting together, the way everyone worked for the common good. As one shipworker said when he saw The Last Ship, “It was better to die on your feet than to go down on your knees”.

The music and lyrics are by Sting. The show is directed by Lorne Campbell and designed by Fifty Nine Productions. There's a book by Lorne Campbell, based on the original by John Logan and Brian Yorkey. And the cast includes Richard Fleeshman, Charlie Hardwick, Joe McGann and Frances McNamee. It's produced by Karl Sydow and Kathryn Schenker, and the venue is to be confirmed.

Who is this show for?
The age limits for the show are to be confirmed.