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Pulitzer Prize and Tony-winning lyricist Brian Yorkey ("Next to Normal") and Tony-winner John Logan ("Red") are writing the book, and Tony-winner Joe Mantello ("Wicked,"
''Angels in America") will direct. Sting says his collaborators have been brutal
-- and he appreciates it: "If they said everything is great, Sting, I wouldn't feel good." Tony-winning producer Jeffrey Seller is on board, and describes his duties as "part nurturer and part critic." "One of my jobs is to express where in the show we need those, and what songs that he's written that may not be necessary to tell this story," Seller said. Seller, who produced "In the Heights," ''Avenue Q" and "Rent," said when they first met, Sting had not recorded any music for the project but had an idea about an abandoned shipyard where workers were building their own ship. "When he told me about that story, I immediately fell in love with this odyssey," he said. "I loved it as much as when Jonathon Larson told me,
'I want to do "La Boheme" in the East Village where instead of suffering from tuberculosis, Mimi suffers from AIDS.'" As an album, "The Last Ship" has a theatrical quality, with multiple recurring characters inspired by Sting's childhood experiences. While performing the album at a benefit earlier this month, he sang these parts in voices different than we're used to hearing from the 16-time Grammy-winning artist. "I used the dialect that I was raised in," Sting said of the accent that has shades of Scottish and Norwegian. "I only ever use it now when I threaten people or when I get really angry. ... My kids would always know I was serious when I start speaking in the weird voice. They're like,
'Uh-oh, he's speaking in that weird voice, he must mean it.'" The musician claims he's never tried to force any of his six children into the family business, yet each of them has found the arts in some way. "My oldest is 36, he's a dad, which makes me a grandfather. They're all out in the world. We have one left, Giacomo is a senior in high school, and he'd be gone next year. We're kind of in a
-- we got dogs, me and Trude (wife, Trudie Styler), we've got a few dogs," he said of the emptying nest. "My kids are very creative. I haven't encouraged them to get into show business at all. I haven't discouraged it, but I certainly haven't helped them or said that is what you should do. My job was to keep them in college and for them to get degrees, which they all did," he says like a proud father. He added: "They're good people. They're not spoiled. They're polite, They're intelligent. They're the best thing I ever did."
[Associated
Press;
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