Sting's first try at Broadway, The Last Ship, will come to an end Jan. 24 after a four-month run. The former Police frontman composed the music for the play, eventually joining the cast to help boost ticket sales. But even the singer's involvement onstage was not enough to save the production. Poor sales during the holiday rush contributed to the show's demise, The New York Times reports.
"We have been bewildered and saddened by our inability to sustain an audience for this musical that we deeply love," the producers wrote in a statement. "There are no easy explanations."
According to the Times, the show cost $15 million to bring to Broadway and $625,000 to keep it going each week. Ticket sales were steady when the show opened in October, but they doubled last month when Sting joined the cast as the shipyard foreman. Most musicals were breaking records last week, a peak time for Broadway with tourists flooding the streets of New York for the holidays. The Last Ship, on the other hand, underperformed.
Sting only signed on to perform until Jan. 24, but the producers decided to pull the plug after the show failed to attract more viewers over the holiday season.
"Sting lives up to his nickname 'The King of Pain,' with The Last Ship," Variety wrote about the production. "Melancholy tones of sorrow and regret saturate this highly personal and intensely felt musical play, which is set in Wallsend, the industrial town in the north of England where the singer-songwriter grew up. The somber book by John Logan and Brian Yorkey takes place in 2007, the year the historic shipyard closed and the town lost its purpose and identity. The lyrical language of Sting's mournful score gives poetic voice to the distressed shipbuilders, but depicting their story as a heroic allegory is regrettably alienating."
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