Sting

[All Change is Good]

I saw "The Last Ship" this weekend in NYC. Sting wrote the music and the lead character is semi-biographical.

Symmetrical verse/chorus, 32 bar song structures just plain don't work onstage.

I watched an entire evening of actors (and great ones at that) trying their damndest to fill the space between vocal phrases. Great spaces for utility players but not characters trying to propel a narrative. Reduces actors to chewing scenery.

Very Rogers and Hammerstein 50 years too late.

Sting, please listen to some Sondheim before you write a musical so you know the onstage situation drives music, not the other way around.

That being said, the songs were beautiful, sometimes very effective and the arrangements were the best of its genre.

[donkeypunch]

Not related to the play at all but I caught his show last year at Artpark....thought I'd be bored senseless, actually was very good. The amount of cougars going nuts was insane as well.

[All Change is Good]

I think he's a great musician and writer.

That album he did with Vinny Colaiuta is so musically satisfying and complex, I was just surprised he did not try to learn the context, purpose and conventions of theatre music before he wrote this musical.

[donkeypunch]

Don't you think that guys Like Sting, assume they are on a different playing field with their name attached to a project. With his name on the Playbill, Sting probably figured that's all it really takes.

[All Change is Good]

Don't you think that guys Like Sting, assume they are on a different playing field with their name attached to a project. With his name on the Playbill, Sting probably figured that's all it really takes.

Rock song writers have been doing this, to varying degrees of success.

I was really surprised about some of the wonky staging choices too.

But my issue is really is that 32 bar pop songs are not like conversation and that doesn't work so well in theatre.

[justme]