Michael Riedel

Michael Riedel

Theater

Sting’s ‘The Last Ship’ sailing toward B’way next fall

I was chatting with Sting the other night — that sound you hear is a name being dropped — about his upcoming Broadway musical, “The Last Ship.”

We were backstage at the 92nd Street Y, where he’d told Rolling Stone writer Anthony DeCurtis: “My first job was as a pit musician for an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical.”

He didn’t name the musical, so I asked him which one it was.

“Jesus Christ Superstar,” he said. “I think it’s Andrew’s best.”

I might quibble — I’m partial to “Sunset Boulevard” — but Sting’s right: Musical theater doesn’t get much more dramatic than the overture to “Superstar,” with those six glorious notes that announce (with cymbals crashing): “J-e-s-u-s C-h-r-i-s-t S-u-p-e-r-s-t-a-r.”

As the late great Cy Coleman said: “I don’t care what you say about Andrew Lloyd Webber. There is not one of us who wouldn’t give his right eye to have written those six notes. When you hear them, you know you’re in the theater.”

The theater is on Sting’s mind these days because he’s about to go into rehearsals for “The Last Ship.” The $14 million musical opens in June in Chicago, and then here next fall.

At the Y, Sting sang some songs written for the show and talked about his love for the musical theater.

He was affable, charming and humble.

“Broadway’s a rough world,” he said. “It’s a landscape littered with bleached corpses.”

Don’t I know it.

Paul Simon and “The Capeman.” Elton John and “Lestat.” Boy George and “Taboo.” Bono and “Spider-Man, Turn Off the Dark.”

They don’t call me “Mr. Clorox” around Shubert Alley for nothing!

So why does Sting want to risk my rinse cycle?

Because, as he said at the Y, he is, essentially, a show queen.

His mother, who was a hairdresser, loved musicals. (I feel compelled to add here that Sting has been with his wife, Trudie Styler, for almost 30 years.)

He grew up listening to “Carousel,” “South Pacific” and “My Fair Lady.”

“It’s not fashionable for a rock ’n’ roller to admit that,” he said — and then sang a lovely bit of “Mr. Snow” from “Carousel.”

He’s done the rock superstar thing, he said, and he’s bored with it. Don’t expect another Police reunion anytime soon.

He wants to write songs for characters, and for a story he knows in his bones — the collapse of the ship-building business in his hometown: Newcastle, England.

I was struck by a photo the other night of the street Sting grew up on, its row of tidy council houses dwarfed by the bow of an enormous ship under construction.

“I grew up under that mountain,” Sting said. (Set designer David Zinn should re-create that photo onstage. The audience at the Y gasped when they saw it.)

“The Last Ship” is about growing up under “that mountain.” It’s about the men and the boys who went to work in those shipyards until the world economy changed and England no longer built ships.

It strikes me as a cross between “Billy Elliot” and “Titanic,” two of my favorite musicals, so we’re off to a good start.

Sting escaped that world and became one of the most successful rock stars of all time. But, as he said the other night, the older you get, the more you’re drawn to your past.

He’s trying to make sense of it all in “The Last Ship.”

The songs he sang were accomplished and haunting. I especially liked the title song: Its lovely melody is swirling in my head.

My only concern is that the score, artful though it is, may be a bit dreary. One sad song about poor ship-builders after another is a recipe for a closing notice.

Remember what Coleman said about those six notes from “Jesus Christ Superstar.”

When you hear them, you know you’re in the theater.

A plug for the National Theatre: The 50th anniversary gala will be shown tomorrow in movie theaters around the country. Celebs will include Helen Mirren, Judi Dench, Maggie Smith, Ralph Fiennes, James Corden and Derek Jacobi.

Check NTlive.com for locations.