Last Ship Down

The Broadway musical “The Last Ship” will close on Jan. 24 despite an unusual attempt by Sting, its composer, to try to increase ticket sales and spread word about the show by joining its cast last month. Two of the musical’s producers, Jeffrey Seller and Kathryn Schenker, shared the news in an email on Monday night to members of the production and other supporters of “The Last Ship.” “We have been bewildered and saddened by our inability to sustain an audience for this musical that we deeply love,” the producers wrote about the show, which cost $15 million to mount on Broadway and an additional $625,000 or more to run each week. “There are no easy explanations.”
The musical, a roman a clef set in a Northeast England shipyard marked for shuttering, will have played 134 performances at the Nederlander-owned Neil Simon Theatre, following a 5-week tryout last summer in Chicago. While most critics were enthusiastic about Sting’s songs and the staging by director Joe Mantello and choreographer Steven Hogget, there was less support for the somewhat lugubrious book by John Logan and Brian Yorkey.