The Last Ship from Broadway to Newcastle: A feminist political musical for the Brexit era

Abstract

Sting’s musical, The Last Ship premiered on Broadway in 2014. Four years later, following a series of workshops at Northern Stage, the musical embarked on its UK tour featuring a number of revisions to its narrative and structure. What emerges from the revised production is a narrative, which places women at the centre through affording them agency and allowing them to occupy powerful, liminal spaces. Whilst The Last Ship remains a tale for the working classes, its UK revisions do well to reposition the central role of the women in this community. Through removing principal characters, which previously served to reinforce a patriarchal hierarchy, the fictional women of Wallsend now drive the plot, allowing for The Last Ship to communicate a morality tale, which echoes the ideologies of a feminist, post-Brexit era.