Why THE LAST SHIP Made My Heart Sink

I am a huge Sting fan. I have every one of his albums. I’ve seen every movie he’s ever made (excluding the UK made-for-TV movies). So I was incredibly excited to see THE LAST SHIP. In fact, I think the only thing that would have been more exciting for me was seeing a Broadway musical written by Bruce Springsteen about Freehold, NJ, the town where I grew up.But when the curtain went up and the music started, my heart sank. The first song, “Island of Souls,” was not original to THE LAST SHIP. It's from the 1991 album “The Soul Cages.” The second song, “All This Time,” has also been previously recorded and released. And I knew, in my heart of hearts that THE LAST SHIP would never be everything that it could have been.And it could have been truly breathtaking. The songs specifically written for the album “The Last Ship” and the play on which it is based are wonderful. In fact, any time the women of the cast of THE LAST SHIP sing and dance, the audience witnesses magic.THE LAST SHIP really does capture the essence of a small town built around a dying industry and of people desperately trying to salvage whatever they can of their life, their culture and their history. It incorporates music and dance indigenous to the region where the story is told. It has the moments of theatrical brilliance.But when I heard “Ghost Story” from the 1999 album “Brand New Day” or the previously released “When We Dance” (which is actually on a Greatest Hits album), the show came to a screeching halt for me. The spell was broken, I was no longer in northern England, I was in my dorm room or my first apartment or wherever else in my life was associated with the song I already knew.When I go to see an original show, I want to see an original show. I wanted all of THE LAST SHIP to be as brilliant and haunting as the material specifically written for that project. In truth, when so many deserving projects never find a producer, or a theater or an audience, I really felt like this production owed it to the audience to go the extra mile and not recycle old songs from other projects, even if they sort of fit.I know I’m in the minority, I’ve read the reviews. And truth be told, most musical theatre fans are not rock and roll fans so it may be that very few people will realize how old some of the music from the show actually is.But for the very first time, I’m disappointed in Sting. If he had gone the extra mile and created all new music specifically for this project, THE LAST SHIP would have deserved the raves it got.