Chicago Theater Review: Sting’s Broadway-Bound Musical ‘The Last Ship’

Variety: In the first of the two narrative strands, there are the shipbuilders, led by Jackie White (the extraordinary Jimmy Nail, personifying blue-collar dignity), the former foreman at the recently sold and shut-down shipyard, who, urged on by the dying local priest (Fred Applegate) and Jackie’s wife (Sally Ann Triplett), agrees to lead the builders on a takeover of the yard with the intention of building one last ship. Sting invests this storyline with stirring group songs, none more moving than “Shipyard,” in which they express the pride they’ve taken in building giant useful objects and the emptiness that comes with the shipyard’s closure.