“The Last Ship” at Theatre Royal, Drury Lane

Franco Milazzo in the West End
★★★☆☆
26 September 2026

Towards the end, The Last Ship comes out with a gag for the ages. Union boss Billy has doubts over whether the very risky high-speed plan laid out by the dying shipyard manager Jackie White is achievable. Billy leans over his friend and quietly pleads, “Even Rome wasn’t built in a day.” “Aye,” says Jackie, “but I wasn’t the foreman on that job.”

Sting and the ensemble.
Photo credit: Nienke de Groot.

That Jackie gets the best laugh of the night shouldn’t be a surprise. He is played by Sting, the same man who composed the music, wrote the lyrics, and released the two albums (1991’s The Soul Cages and 2013’s The Last Ship) which inspired his first musical. The story is based on his early years in the shipbuilding town of Wallsend, Tyneside. And his face and his name (twice) are on the cover of the programme.

That said, Sting wasn’t responsible for The Last Ship’s book. Four people have worked on the soapy dialogue over the last 13 years including John Logan who wrote the James Bond films Skyfall and Spectre. Alongside those of Brian Yorkey, Logan’s contributions were used for the 2014 debut outings in Chicago and Broadway. That work has since been shaken and stirred by Lorne Campbell for the 2018 UK run and now Barney Norris for the 2026 international tour (directed by Leo Warner) which ends at Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. How much influence the man whose name appears all over this production had over the words coming out of his character’s mouth is, of course, impossible to say.

Curiously, Sting – who has previously described himself as a “benign dictator”, “selfish”, and “egotistical” – didn’t originate the lead role of Jackie when the musical first opened. Auf Wiedersehen, Pet’s Jimmy Nail came out of retirement to play the charismatic ship foreman but Sting twice took over from his fellow Geordie: once when sales were slipping on the Great White Way (the show still closed early) and later on when “protracted negotiations” were blamed for Nail pulling out before the UK tour started. This time around, the 74-year-old ex-Police frontman unapologetically takes centre stage and provides hefty dollops of dramatic ballast.

Not that this show needs more plotlines. As well as several revolving around the arrival of the government minister and the imminent privatization of the town’s chief employer, there are tender conversations between the cancer-ridden Jackie and his wife Peggy (Jackie Morrison); returning soldier Gideon (Declan Bennett) finds out from his ex-girlfriend Meg (Frances McNamee) that he has a 16-year-old daughter Ellen (Hannah Richardson) that he knew nothing about; Meg is looking for a way out of what can only be described as a “situationship” with the shipyard supervisor Freddy (Matt Beveridge); and Gideon and Ellen are catching up while making separate plans to leave town, much to the ire of Meg. Meanwhile the Ferryman (reggae musician Shaggy for only two performances, succeeded by Lejaun Sheppard) haunts the stage as an avatar of death.

Photo credit: Nienke de Groot.

59 Studio’s set design has been physically pared back over the years but – like many of the huge ships that left Wallsend never to return – is still a towering construction. Gone is the colossal framework of rusted steel girders, catwalks, and exposed scaffolding used on Broadway. There are still a few vertical struts and a mid-air platform but the emphasis is now on the company’s video projection of Utopia, the fictional “last ship” that Jackie and his team are working on. Taking up the height and width of the stage, the immense backdrop imagery gives an impression of what it must have been like for a young Gordon Sumner literally growing up in the shadow of the latest shipyard commission.

The heartfelt acting among a capable cast is let down both the songbook and the script. Until the last 15 minutes, neither go out of their way to impress. There are very good reasons why Sting’s records with the Police are of a different class to anything on the 15 albums he has released since he went solo. Likewise, the storyline talks of anger towards the Conservative government over the loss of their livelihoods but that sentiment comes across as lukewarm at best. In comparison, Live Aid musical Just for One Day has Bob Geldof attacking Margaret Thatcher with pure lyrical fury – and that was over VAT of all things.

That final quarter of an hour, though, is something else. There’s loss, there’s victory, and there’s a number you can hum on the way out. The Last Ship leaves it to the end to demonstrate just why it has continued sailing on all these years.