Fans will be able to see Sting sing and act on stage in London from September 22 – October 3.
Sting and his life now seem to be far away from Wallsend and the shipyard that overlooked his childhood home. But it is the Swan Hunter shipyard and his working class upbringing which seem to occupy a lot of mind – and his working hours – at the age of 74.
The Last Ship, a musical he first launched over a decade ago, is back on the road in 2026 with Sting playing the lead role of Jackie White, the shipyard’s foreman.
“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. I’ve watched thousands of men walk to work every morning, and wondered is that what I’m supposed to do?
“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 that’s the story, but it’s also woven with a love story, tension between fathers and sons.
“All kinds of serious stuff, it’s not Aladdin,” he says with a chuckle and smile.
One question for anyone watching the show later this year is likely to be whereabouts the musical mixes some fiction with the fact, as much of the story seems to be based or inspired by his own life.
Looking back and discussing his dad, Sting says: “He wanted his son, me, to have a technical education, iron work, woodwork, something that he understood. 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.
“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, so that biographical attention is in the play, although it’s not entirely biographical by any means, but there are parts of my life and parts of my personality which are obviously in the play.
“We’re recreating the drama of a shipyard on stage, it’s something operatic scale of a shipyard, gigantic, and we really do recreate that on stage.”
Delving even deeper he 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.”
This updated version of his musical, which Sting first developed in 2011, features new scenes and new songs. But ever the perfectionist, Sting insists there are still small changes happening even now as the production moves to America before its run at the Drury Lane theatre.
In comments which might test some theatre producers and directors, he explains: “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, and it’s a fascinating organic living thing, it’s not like we’re reproducing a museum artefact, it’s living and breathing, so as long as I’m living and breathing, I will keep working on it, so that it will be different when we get to Drury Lane incrementally, at least from where we will be in New York next month.
“Little musical changes, arrangements, lines that change every night. It’s kind of improvised.”
The singer was born Gordon Sumner in the North East, but no one has called him that for many decades. His nickname of Sting, came about because of a yellow and black striped jumper he would wear to perform at jazz gigs at weekends and evenings when he was at college and later working as a teacher.
Spreading his wings in his Twenties, after a complicated relationship with his parents, he fled Wallsend and became a musician, first in London in The Police and then much later as a solo star. Success followed on levels few can match.
In The Police with Stewart Copeland and Andy Summers, he scored 6 Number one albums with hits like Message In A Bottle and Walking On The Moon.
His solo career continued where the band left off and his 21 top 40 albums in the UK and many global hits have helped him gain a place on the Sunday Times Rich List , with an estimated net worth of around £320 million and an estate in Italy and a Wiltshire home with an 800 acre garden amongst others.
It’s a far cry from the terraced Wallsend home with an outside toilet where he began.
Aside from the music Sting has also acted before in iconic films like Quadrophenia and Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels.
Sadly there’s no time discuss any of that in my short interview slot, so instead I ask him why he still works and what keeps him driven given his huge success and huge bank balance.
He says: “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.
“It gave me an identity, a work ethic, and I’m a storyteller. I’m not sure what I would do otherwise.”
It strikes me that the two people he would most like to see The Last Ship are no longer here. He says his brother was “a wreck” after recently watching this new version in Amsterdam, and in their own way, Sting believes his parents are watching the show every night.
After playing several songs from the show at a launch event he said poignantly: “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 a catharsis in a theatrical setting.”
The new production, with songs by Sting including Island of Souls, All This Time, and When We Dance, as well as new material, has a new book by Barney Norris and will feature a company of over 50.
* Sting is bringing The Last Ship to London’s Theatre Drury Lane from September 22 – October 3.
Tickets and further information will be available at thelastship-musical.com
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