The Last Ship (2014...
He forgot to take into account that Tom is invulnerable. He drove his skiff well beyond the safe blast zone and dropped his payload, blew up the warship and ended up with just a boo-boo on his forehead.
The Last Ship (2014...
Broadway: Wicked, Tuck Everlasting, The Last Ship, La Cage aux Folles, Sister Act, Young Frankenstein, The Producers (also London), Sound of Music. National tours: Wicked, Anything Goes, The Producers, Beauty and the Beast. Regional: Old Globe, Alliance, Long Wharf, Mark Taper, Geffen, St. Louis Rep, Guthrie (Resident Artist, 13 productions). TV: Crashing, Billions, Mrs. Maisel, Person of Interest... over 100 more. Married to Cherie Sprosty, Liturgy Director at Cabrini Shrine. Proud father of Ben, Meredith and Ethan.
The 35-year-old actress is no stranger to juggling at least three or four television shows at any given time. Just last year, Regan was at one point balancing her duties on The Last Ship with Jane the Virgin and the since-canceled Agent Carter. Asked what inspires Regan to have the drive to stay hungry and strive for more, her reasoning is simple.
Two years ago, Gardullo says talks began about mounting a search for the Clotilda based on conversations with the descendants of the founders of Africatown. Then last year, it seemed that Ben Raines, a reporter with AL.com had found the Clotilda, but that wreck turned out to be too large to be the missing ship. Gardullo says everyone involved got moving on several fronts to deal with a complicated archaeological search process to find the real Clotilda.
Even though the U.S. banned the importation of the enslaved from Africa in 1808, the high demand for slave labor from the booming cotton trade encouraged Alabama plantation owners like Timothy Meaher to risk illegal slave runs to Africa. Meaher took that risk on a bet that he could bring a shipload of Africans back across the ocean. In 1860, his schooner sailed from Mobile to what was then the Kingdom of Dahomey under Captain William Foster. He bought Africans captured by warring tribes back to Alabama, skulking into Mobile Bay under the cover of night, then up the Mobile River. Some of the transported enslaved were divided between Foster and the Meahers, and others were sold. Foster then ordered the Clotilda taken upstream, burned and sunk to conceal the evidence of their illegal activity.
This renovation represents more than a tinkering around the edges. The original story by John Logan and Brian Yorkey has been overhauled. The context of a shipbuilding town in Northern England confronting the grim reality of industrial decline is the same, but the plot has been redrafted.
On screen, the sight of the ship gradually coming into hulking being would have provided a concrete focus for the drama, or at least a sense of forward motion toward a visible, if ultimately futile, conclusion. Here, the whole project takes place offstage, and no one has come up with a visual metaphor or imaginative staging idea to represent it in theatrical terms.
The story about how the shipyard men and the women who love them fight against the forces that are putting them out of business is meant to celebrate the indomitable human spirit. But it all comes across as a shallow gloss on how the downtrodden can fool themselves into a happy ending if they speechify and sing in beautiful choral unison while stomping about in a robust Celtic manner.
Jimmy Nail, a well-known singer-songwriter in Europe who came out of retirement to help Sting with the songs, is channeling his father, who was a foreman in a Newcastle shipyard. Rachel Tucker is silver-voiced and persuasive as a Meg who has hardened on the outside, but remains softly romantic underneath it all.
The Morgan was launched on July 21, 1841, from the yard of Jethro and Zachariah Hillman in New Bedford, Massachusetts. It typically sailed with a crew of about 35, representing sailors from around the world. The whaleship measures 106 feet, 11 inches length on deck with a beam measuring 27 feet, 9 inches. Its main truck on the mainmast is 110 feet above the deck; fully-rigged, and the ship carries 7,134 square feet of sail. The huge try-pots used for converting blubber into whale oil are on deck; below are the cramped quarters in which the officers and men lived.
At Mystic Seaport Museum, the Charles W. Morgan has been given a new lease on life; however, its future vitality depends on continual preservation. A major program of restoration and preservation was begun in 1968 to repair it structurally, and during the course of this work, it was decided to restore the ship to the rig of a double-topsail bark, which it carried from 1867 through the end of its whaling career. the ship appears as it was during most of its active career.
In January 1974, after removal from a sand and mud berth, the ship was hauled out on the lift dock in the Henry B. duPont Preservation Shipyard for inspection and hull work as needed. The hull proved to be in remarkably good condition, with only a new false keel, worm shoe and some planking being required.
This sonar image created by SEARCH Inc. and released by the Alabama Historical Commission shows the remains of the Clotilda, the last known U.S. ship involved in the trans-Atlantic slave trade. AP hide caption
At least two-thirds of the ship remains, and the existence of the unlit and unventilated slave pen, built during the voyage by the addition of a bulkhead where people were held as cargo below the main deck for weeks, raises questions about whether food and water containers, chains and even human DNA could remain in the hull, said Delgado.
For Joycelyn Davis, a sixth-generation granddaughter of African captive Charlie Lewis and vice president of the Clotilda Descendants Association, the story of what happened more than 160 years ago is best told through the people who were involved, not a sunken ship. But she said she's excited to learn more about what has been discovered, adding: "I think it's going to be a surprise for us all."
The Clotilda was the last ship known to transport African captives to the American South for enslavement. Nearly 90 feet (27 meters) in length, it departed Mobile, Alabama, for an illegal trip to purchase people decades after Congress outlawed such trade in 1808.
The ship had been sent across the ocean on a voyage financed by a wealthy businessman whose descendants remain prominent in Mobile. The Clotilda's captain transferred its human cargo off the ship once it arrived in Alabama and set fire to the vessel to hide evidence of the journey. But most of the ship didn't catch fire and remained in the river.
The state has set aside $1 million for preservation and research, and additional work planned at the site in early 2022 could show what's inside the hull, Delgado said. But far more work is needed to determine whether the ship could ever be pulled out of the mud and put on display, as some have suggested.
The Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Ross (DDG 71) began its south-bound international strait transit en route to the Mediterranean Sea March 3, after conducting maritime security operations intended to enhance regional maritime stability, combined readiness, and naval capability with our NATO allies and partners in the region.This is the first time a U.S. Navy ship has visited the Black Sea in 2020. Ross was also the last ship to visit the Black Sea in 2019, marking the 8th visit by a U.S Navy ship last year.
Theatre Review by Matthew Murray - December 21, 2014 The Last Ship Music and lyrics by Sting. Book by John Logan and Brian Yorkey. Directed by Joe Mantello. Choreography by Steven Hoggett. Music Direction, orchestrations and arrangements by Rob Mathes. Scenic & costume design by David Zinn. Lighting design by Christopher Akerlind. Sound design by Brian Ronan. Cast: Michael Esper, Rachel Tucker, Jimmy Nail, Aaron Lazar, Sally Ann Triplett, Collin Kelly-Sordelet, and Fred Applegate, Eric Anderson, Ethan Applegate, Carig Bennett, Dawn Cantwell, Jeremy Davis, Bradley Dean, Alyssa DiPalm, Colby Foytik, David Michael Garry, Timothy Gulan, Shawna M. Hamic, Rich Hebert, Leah Hocking, Todd A. Horman, Sarah Hunt, Jamie Jackson, Sean Jenness, Drew McVety, Johnny Newcomb, Matthew Stocke, Cullen R. Titmas, Jeremy Woodard. Theatre: Neil Simon Theatre, 250 West 52nd Street between Broadway and 8th AvenueRunning Time: 2 hours 30 minutes, with one intermissionSchedule: Tuesday at 7pm, Wednesday at 2pm and 8pm, Thursday at 7pm, Friday at 8pm, Saturday at 2pm and 8pm, Sunday at 3pmTickets: TicketmasterStingPhoto by Matthew Murphy.All stunt casting should be done the way The Last Ship does it. Stepping into the role of the shipyard foreman Jackie White, the show's composer, Sting (you've probably heard of him), makes his contributions without ever standing out. This is a good thing. Though Jackie is an important bellwether, the most prominent symbol of the working-class disaffection the central plot event (building a final sailing vessel after the yards are closed) aims to correct, he's a supporting character at best, tasked with parts of some four songs and vanishing for whole scenes at a time while the main emotional story, about runaway sailor Gideon (Michael Esper) coming back to his Wallsend home to find girlfriend Meg (Rachel Tucker) hasn't waited 15 years for him, unfolds. It's a role that originator Jimmy Nail, well, nailed, but that demands a laborer's aching-back authenticity as an anchor.Sting provides that, couching an itching uncertainty about the future within a casual rage about Jackie's lot. Though Nail (who remains in the cast as the Jackie standby) better realized Jackie's size in theatrical terms, Sting is stronger at capturing the depths of Jackie's hopelessness: In the earliest scenes, his eyes are dark and vacant, showing you that this is a man who's already accepted that his life is over. He grumbles through his lyrics, trying but failing to kindle the enthusiasm to change his circumstances, and stamps his feet half-heartedly through Steven Hoggett's rustic choreography. (This also provides a starker contrast with Sally Ann Triplett, who plays Jackie's smoldering-firebrand wife, Peg.) When redemption in the form of that final contract arrives, Sting unleashes his new energy tentatively; his Jackie knows that this will be a long road no matter what, and he's waiting to invest himself fully. If, indeed, there's no point, he may as well not tire himself unnecessarily.The closest thing to a problem with Sting here is that he looks much younger and less weathered than is absolutely ideal for Jackie; though 63 in real life, he reads a good 20 years younger onstage, which diminishes a bit of Jackie's been-there-done-that authority. Even so, he seems a natural in the part, and truly at home onstage (his only other Broadway credit is the 1989 revival of 3 Penny Opera), and never pulls focus away from where it needs to be most: on the show.I remain convinced that The Last Ship is an excellent contemporary musical in the Golden Age mold, that, thanks as much to librettists Brian Yorkey and John Logan and director Joe Mantello, at once manages to be sweeping while also being human. It's been maintained well so far, too: In the almost two months since its opening, the other performances have not degraded at all; Collin Kelly-Sordelet, who plays both the young Gideon and Meg's own stir-crazy son, has improved greatly (and he was quite good the first time) and now more pointedly details the intergenerational impact of mistakes uncorrected.The future of the show at this point is not exactly clear. Sting is currently scheduled to appear only through January 24, and press reports hint at the possibility that the musical might not run much at all (if any) beyond that. If Sting is what you need to get to get in the door of the Neil Simon, then go for it. Just know that his onstage work is but one tiny part of what makes The Last Ship sail so proudly.Original Theatre Review by Matthew Murray - October 26, 2014 Michael Esper and Rachel Tucker.Photo by Joan Marcus.Pop stars' unchecked egos rarely go down smoothly when wrapped in musical theatre; what makes one a compelling recording or concert artist does not automatically transfer to the stage with any sense of common sense, let alone drama, attached. But if it too often seems that such writers' only goal is to force Broadway to bend to their will—however inappropriate the outcome may be—it's clear that with The Last Ship, which just opened at the Neil Simon, Sting has happily bent his will to Broadway's.The result is the most engaging and certainly the most moving musical Broadway has seen in—well, quite a while. Sting, collaborating with a trio of creatives who are all doing some of their best work in their fields to date—bookwriters John Logan (Red) and Brian Yorkey (Next to Normal, If/Then), and director Joe Mantello (Wicked). And perhaps the most stunning aspect of the show they've produced is that, while maintaining a fairly consistent high level of quality, they have done so while writing about nothing more than ordinary people faced with ordinary problems.To be fair, nothing more may be a bit misleading, as The Last Ship actually has huge things on its mind despite weaving a story that, on the surface, is small enough to be below notice. The plight of a couple dozen shipwrights in Wallsend in northeastern England, who all lost their positions when the shipyards were bought and don't want to take replacements that pay a lot less money, is not the kind of thing that immediately seems to sing. In fact, it all but threatens not to.But factor in a man named Gideon Fletcher (Michael Esper), who returns to Wallsend to pay final tribute to the authoritarian scholar he escaped by boat 15 years earlier; Meg Dawson (Rachel Tucker), the girl he left behind bearing promises he ended up not keeping; Arthur Millburn (Aaron Lazar), the one time laborer whose management job now puts him at odds with his former friends and whose relationship with Meg puts him at odds with Gideon; and Father O'Brien (Fred Applegate), the dying priest and town patriarch who conceives the idea of all the unemployed men building one final vessel (using money he, ahem, pilfered from Church funds) to give their lives a late salvo of meaning, and you are, in fact, facing a richly textured, and incredibly lyrical, work.Questions of just what responsibility parents have for shaping their children's lives, and when those children should listen, arise time and time again. Gideon and Meg must confront myriad past mistakes as they ponder a potential new future. How deep love runs—and when it's a less eternal kind of affection—vexes almost everyone. Father O'Brien must balance in-the-moment pleasures and flawless-hindsight regret continuously. Has Arthur sold out or done the right thing for everyone, and can or should he make amends? And is this goodbye project the best idea the men have ever had, and a sure route to rekindling their foundering sense of purpose, or a tragedy in the making?Fred Applegate, Jimmy Nail, Sally Ann Triplett, and the cast.Photo by Joan Marcus.As the plot unfolded, I not only found myself caring for each of these issues and others, but also caring deeply for the finely crafted characters—who also include Jackie White (Jimmy Nail) as a senior dockworker and his smart-tongued bartending wife Peggy (Sally Ann Triplett), and Tom (Collin Kelly-Sordelet), a young man caught between two fathers—and unable to predict much of what would happen, or under what circumstances. Logan and Yorkey don't always avoid cliché—the sin-drenched clergyman and the buxom, bitchy tavern owner (Shawna M. Hamic, good) are two tropes I didn't need to see again—but they succeed much more often than they fail.The same is true of Sting, who slides effortlessly into the musical theatre idiom. His opening number, Island of Souls, provides a haunting montage of the background action that sets up the story, and establishes the dark, oddly hopeful, torturedsea chantey score to come. Sting writes palpably effective character numbers, whether choked with lost opportunity for Gideon; pounding with frustration for the working men (the raging but wistful Shipyard, the hard-driving title song, the desperate We Got Now't Else); slithering with sly sexuality for Meg one moment (If You Ever See Me Talking to a Sailor) and awash in desolate romanticism later (It's Not the Same Moon); a cleverly gentle dad-kid moment about fighting at the top of Act II; or even Show Some Respect, a spine-tingling spin on an Irish wake that's joyous enough to inspire the dead to get up and dance.So outstanding is so much of what's here that it's a shame to have to report a handful of notable missteps. The middle of the first act is highly flabby, with critical scenes taking too long to develop and much of Sting's underscoring sapping his otherwise on-target songs of momentum just when they need it most. (Rob Mathes's evocative but leaden orchestrations rarely help.) The set (David Zinn, who also designed the nice, simple costumes) has moments of shadowy beauty, particularly in the opening and closing scenes, but often suggests a cavernous world not as close-knit as we're supposed to believe this one is; and Christopher Akerlind's lights look lazily set too low for practically every scene. And much of Steven Hoggett's choreography is unremarkable, by and large a warmed-over retread of his bar stomping moves for Once.Mantello's staging, however, is his best to date for a Broadway musical, at once taut and lively, expectant and guarded, just like the lives it documents. And the performances are, to a person, superb. Esper is sensational as Gideon, playing every minute of the 15 years of agony the man inflicted on Meg and himself, but doing so with a remarkable energy and a compelling, if less than world-class, singing voice. (The songs all fall perfectly in his range, something that's not always true for actors of Esper's caliber when cast as musical leads.) Smoke, steam, and tears emerge in equal measure from Tucker, who expertly presents the contradictory feelings that drive Meg.Nail and Applegate are both excellent as the serious and comic moral centers of the community, Lazar finds every ounce of conflicted affection in Arthur, and Triplett's a firebrand as the strong-willed Peggy. Kelly-Sordelet makes an auspicious Broadway debut as Tom: witty and kinetic, but showing how even a man this young has already learned to always hold something back.Don't expect too much of that attitude from The Last Ship. If it falls short of matching the rigorous polish of classics like Carousel or My Fair Lady, Sting and company hold that as their standard, and deliver a show with a heart as pure and unapologetic as that of the best Golden Age titles while avoiding the sentimentality or plasticky fakeness that so often accompanies soulless imitation. And escaping its spell is not easy: Don't be surprised if, as you experience the epic quest of the real people pushing through pain to find real redemption, you find yourself willing to follow them straight to the open sea—or just about anywhere else. Share: 041b061a72