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As solemn and ponderous as a tanker, Sting’s musical about industrial decline in the north-east finally heaves into the West End, albeit for just 16 (surely commercially unviable) performances. This has been a passion project of the singer-songwriter for over 15 years, a salute to the eviscerated Tyneside shipbuilding communities he escaped, but it’s far from riveting.
The folk-inflected score is pretty good, as you’d expect from such an accomplished musical storyteller, but overstuffed with 27 numbers, including reprises. The projected image of a massive ship’s hull dominating the stage underlines the over-use of seagoing metaphors in the lyrics. The plot, which welds a prodigal love story to an up-the-workers fantasy of anti-capitalist defiance, is insultingly lame. The acting in Leo Warner’s production is unsubtle, to say the least.
