Sting Puts 'The Last Ship' West End Tickets on Sale for Sept. 22-Oct. 3 Run

3 articles · Updated · The Guardian · May 28

Tickets for Sting’s revised musical “The Last Ship” go on sale May 28 ahead of a 12-day West End run at Theatre Royal Drury Lane from Sept. 22 to Oct. 3, with Sting also set to star.
The announcement came with Sting arguing deindustrialisation stripped many men of physical work and purpose, helping fuel some forms of modern toxic masculinity.
Set in a shipyard modeled on Wallsend, where Sting grew up, the show follows workers facing the loss of identity as Britain’s shipyards closed in the 1970s and 1980s.
The musical opened in Chicago in 2014 and had a mixed Broadway run, but has since toured internationally and been reworked with cuts to some characters and a new book by Barney Norris.
Sting said the project, unlike a jukebox musical built on his hits, took the harder original route and only now may be close to finding its audience.

Is the decline of manual labor truly fueling 'toxic masculinity,' or does this oversimplify the issue?

Does romanticizing the 'civic pride' of past industries ignore the brutal realities of that work?

As AI threatens modern jobs, how can society avoid repeating the social trauma of deindustrialisation?