How THE LAST SHIP Connects My Family's Story
Melody Nicolette
Grief is the price we pay for love.
On February 27th, 2013 I sat on the couch of my childhood living room curled up and hugging my knees so tightly I could have pulled myself inside out. Disassociating off and on, there was some worry from those around me that my body might go into shock. On February 26th, 2013, just 10 hours before, my grandmother had left this world, holding my hand. I knew, and dreaded, all my life that there would someday be a day when I would have to live without her, but nothing really prepares you for these moments.
On February 27th, 2020, my mother and I saw THE LAST SHIP in San Francisco at the Golden Gate Theatre.
This may seem unrelated, and sharing the moments after my grandmother’s death may also seem like a strange and overtly personal aside, but neither of these is true. To understand how this review will be going forward, you have to know that THE LAST SHIP takes place where my grandmother was from in England, and that Newcastle Upon Tyne is as much a part of what made her who she was as much as she made me who I am--a little brown girl with a lily-white grandmother who was my best friend in the whole world. I am as Geordie/ Northern/ Scot as I am Native/ Indigenous; it’s part of my very being. Both suffer from intergenerational trauma woven into their DNA, but have resilience woven in, too.
I’ve never been to Newcastle (I’ve never been anywhere outside of the US, actually). My mom and sister have been there a couple of times. Sometimes I forget it’s a place that really exists, because it’s so much of a fantasy location in telling the fairytale of how my grandparents met.In fact, one of the reasons I convinced myself to see THE LAST SHIP was the promotional image of Sting with the Tyne Bridge behind him, which is the same bridge that appears on the “magic” postcard my grandpa wrote on.
My grandmother lived in Gateshead and walked to Newcastle for work every day. She was raised by her single mother and her blind grandmother, estranged from her ethnically Scottish father, and came from a long, and proud line of coal miners. She went to work to take care of her mother and grandmother the instant she finished school at 16. She lived through the Great Depression and the bombing air raids and food rationings during the Second World War. She’d always been a tough and brave person, instilled with a good sense of her own self-worth (refusing to call her supervisor “madame,” and walking off the job if they didn’t treat her right), as well as an innate self of justice and equality for others. She married my (Mexican) grandfather in 1945 and left England for San Francisco. She never went back. They told her when she was leaving, “You’ll do very well in Americer, yer very cheeky.” She had no accent by the time I knew her, only a slight lilt similar to the Americanized speaking voice of the late, great Alan Young (who came from North Shields). However, if she happened to run into someone from Newcastle, Heaven help you trying to figure out what they were saying. She was no shrinking violet, and all 4’11 of her was a force to be reckoned with, despite being an incredibly snuggly, cozy and nurturing grandma.
I knew THE LAST SHIP took place in Wallsend, Tyne and Wear, but what I didn’t realize was how well they would convey how much of that essence into the show.
THE LAST SHIP’s current form has been a long road and has seen a few incarnations. I have not seen or heard any of the other incarnations of this show (although I am sad I missed my friend Shawna in the original cast on Broadway, and I did see the Macy’s parade and Tony Awards performances). This review comes from seeing just the 2020 US tour, and having never listened to the original cast recording, not reading any other reviews or background information about it.
I would highly recommend approaching the show this way. I suggest going in blind, but bringing lots of tissues.
I absolutely loved THE LAST SHIP, and cannot recommend it enough to anyone. There wasn’t a stand-out in the cast, because it was perfectly cast. Every single person carried the show. Every single person on that stage was vocally flawless. The harmonies were so complex and sophisticated, it sounded like a mass. I was blown away by how stunningly beautiful all of the voices are. None of the music sounds like a show tune; it sounds like the sea and pub shanties of the people this story is telling.
I knew that Sting was in the all the promotional material because he wrote it, but for some reason didn’t realize he was going to be in it. He was unbelievable! This is by no means a vanity project; Sting absolutely embodies his character of Jackie White heart and soul and I cannot imagine anyone else doing it justice.I absolutely could not believe how effortlessly he, and everyone else in the cast, acted; everything about this show was completely organic. Everything was so realistic, and told an authentic and human story. No one on that stage came across as if they were acting, it was as if we were watching an actual moment in time, as if we were there ourselves in 1986 Northumberland. No one came across like they were reciting lines, it all just translated as natural, normal dialogue. (There was no sense of people who have never been truly hard up a day in their lives pretending to be poor people in the way that wealthy people think that poor people act --unlike some of the last productions of Les Misérables). If I read the programme correctly, the entire US touring cast is from the UK.
That is the beauty of THE LAST SHIP: telling the extraordinary story of the courage of everyday people with beautiful language and music, both of which are aboriginal to where the story takes place, and necessary to this story being told appropriately. The Geordie accent was captured perfectly. It is both a universal story, and an innately Northern English one. It’s told in the way that this story needs to be told: authentically. It’s not watered down for an American audience. There’s no forced pathos, no unnecessary drama, no overt sex, shoot-em-up bad guys, cart moving feats of superhuman strength, no disappearing villages, no magic or deus ex machina that doesn’t actually make sense.
Yet for all of its realism, there are moments when the show is more like an impressionistic opera, something closer to Billy Budd or Dialogues des Carmélites. The way this is executed is nothing short of genius. Projections and trick lighting and special effects are what have become standard for modern Broadway shows, but rarely have they been used in a way to convey something so meaningful this artfully.
The people of the North, particularly Northumberland and the Newcastle area are some pretty tough cookies. They’re people who spend their entire lives toiling and often die from terrible diseases after being constantly exposed to toxins in their workplaces. They are poor in the bank, but rich in spirit, family, community and culture (not unlike Mexicans). Conservative governments, like the Thatcher dictatorship, target, disable and infantilize their economies, not dissimilar to the same way that the US government targets Native Americans. (Miss me with that fake feminism BS about Thatcher being a “*~strong woman leader, uwu~*” when she built her entire career on destroying other people’s lives).*The miners and the shipbuilders of the North, like the migrant workers in the California agriculture fields, are both some of the hardest working people in the world, and some of the poorest, dispelling the myth that the poor “just don’t work hard enough.” (*It wasn’t just a matter of moving away from unsustainable energy, after eons of exploiting the people who worked the mines and built the ships, after exposing them to decades and centuries of dangerous chemicals and conditions that cost them their lives, it was removing their means of income while providing no new means of employment--there was certainly no Green New Deal in place.)
Grief is the price we pay for love, and nowhere has that theme been more tenderly rendered than THE LAST SHIP.
This was my first time going to the Golden Gate Theatre since its remodel and the SHN change to Broadway SF. The touch-ups to the theatre are noted and appreciated. The Powers That Be have also tried to “touch-up” the neighbourhood with yuppification, and not attempting to solve any of the underlying problems (good luck with that). The new sound system of the Golden Gate leaves a lot to be desired. I will be perfectly honest: I am a little sticker-shocked looking at the prices of tickets sky-rocketing in the last 2 years alone, though especially since the transition to Broadway SF, (shamefully even for The SpongeBob Musical, which is non-Equity). This has nothing to do with THE LAST SHIP itself, and isn’t a comment on the show at all, but those of you who wish to see it may find seeing it cost-prohibitive (although there are promotional discount codes floating around, which is how I was able to see it).
My only other comment is that there is a timeline of the shipbuilding industry and a Geordie slang quick-phrase guide in the Playbill which are worth reading before the show starts. This show was not watered down for an American audience, which is great, but I know there are folks out there who don’t have little Northern English grandmothers and might have difficulty with the authenticity of the dialect (as well as calling everyone “man” regardless of gender.)
THE LAST SHIP is playing at the Golden Gate Theatre in San Francisco from now until March 22nd, two blocks from the Powell Street station. I don’t rate or grade things on a numerical or letter scale, I just encourage people to see things or not. I encourage you, short of begging you, that, if you can, go see this show. It’s one of the best pieces of theatre I have ever seen. The power of the human spirit is the most powerful force in the world.
Fortiter Defendit Triumphans. CREAG AN TUIRC.
Further Reading:
"Making It" or Not: Either way, It's a Wonderful Life
Margaret Thatcher and her impact on north-east England Chi speaks for Newcastle’s experience of Baroness Thatcher’s legacy 'Thatcher Was a Terror Without an Atom of Humanity' (not one to quote that jackass Morrissey, but a broken clock is right twice a day)
Sting’s ‘The Last Ship’ Is a Glorious Depiction of Bleakness and Desolation
Melody Nicolette is a coloratura operatic soprano, film composer, recording artist, freelance writer and illustrator, and moralist killjoy, who can be found wherever ‘@’ is a thing @lebasfondmusic.