{"id":506880,"date":"2026-05-28T12:24:14","date_gmt":"2026-05-28T12:24:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/506880\/"},"modified":"2026-05-28T12:24:14","modified_gmt":"2026-05-28T12:24:14","slug":"loss-of-manual-jobs-could-be-driving-toxic-masculinity-says-sting-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/506880\/","title":{"rendered":"Loss of manual jobs could be driving toxic masculinity, says Sting \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

The fact many men no longer use their hands and physicality on a daily basis may be driving some of the toxic traits in modern masculinity, according to Sting<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The singer, who on Wednesday announced that his musical about the last days of a shipyard was coming to the West End this autumn, told the Guardian that one of the byproducts of deindustrialisation was the loss of physical productivity for men.<\/p>\n

He said: \u201cI work with my hands every day as a musician, and I\u2019m lucky. It\u2019s a rare thing for modern men to actually use their hands and use their strengths to do anything. We\u2019ve lost something there.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t have any answers, but maybe the toxicity in society at the moment is [a result of the fact] that we\u2019ve lost that direction for our energy, that male strength. It\u2019s rare we have to use it.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Last Ship, which debuted in Chicago in 2014 before a run on Broadway, focuses on the fate of men who work at a shipyard similar to Swan Hunter\u2019s in Wallsend where Sting grew up, before the yards closed during deindustrialisation in the 1970s and 1980s.<\/p>\n

Sting, who wrote the music for the show and will star in a run at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane in September, said the closure of the shipyards began an era when the north of England was failed by successive governments.<\/p>\n

\u201cBritain\u2019s wealth was created in the coalfields and the steel towns and the mill towns and the shipyards,\u201d he said. \u201cAll of those skill sets were thrown on the scrapheap \u2026 for Thatcher\u2019s dream of a service economy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lots of male characters in the musical are in a moment of crisis as their identity is being taken from them. One asks: \u201cFor what are we men without a ship to complete?\u201d<\/p>\n

But Sting said the production isn\u2019t an attempt to romanticise what could be a brutal industry where there were hundreds of accidents a year and fatalities were not uncommon.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Sting: \u2018When I get angry I\u2019m a Geordie. It\u2019s very effective\u2019Opens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m the guy who didn\u2019t want to work there and for good reason,\u201d he said. \u201cThey were working in asbestos, all kinds of toxic chemicals. At the same time, I\u2019m nostalgic for the sense of community that I was brought up in.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat environment was so rich with symbolism. The town, although it was depressed a lot of the time, was extremely proud of the ships that were built there. The work was awful and dangerous and hard, but those guys could look back and say: \u2018Well, I built that.\u2019 The civic pride was massive.\u201d<\/p>\n

When The Last Ship opened on Broadway it had mixed reviews and wasn\u2019t able to emulate the success of other British musicals rooted in regional stories, such as Billy Elliot and Kinky Boots.<\/p>\n

But it has since toured all over the world and has been revised since it debuted more than a decade ago, with some characters being cut and a new book, written by Barney Norris.<\/p>\n

When it played in Newcastle upon Tyne in 2018, the Guardian\u2019s Michael Billington said it featured \u201cthe most thrilling choral writing I\u2019ve heard in a British musical since Howard Goodall\u2019s The Hired Man\u201d.<\/p>\n

Looking back at the Broadway run, Sting said he made life hard for himself by writing something wholly original rather than something based on an existing story or choosing to create a jukebox musical based on his own songs.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0\u2018Let\u2019s see what you\u2019re made of Dublin\u2019: Sting rolls out the Police and solo hits in the capitalOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

\u201cThose are the easy routes, but I chose the most difficult one and I\u2019ve enjoyed every minute of it. It\u2019s been incredibly difficult and challenging, but also the most rewarding exploit of my life,\u201d he said. \u201cI think it needs to find its audience. It needs to find its voice. It\u2019s taken this long, but I think we\u2019re pretty close to it right now.\u201d<\/p>\n

The singer is embroiled in a high court battle over alleged unpaid royalties with his former bandmates in the Police. Sting, whose real name is Gordon Sumner, was the band\u2019s singer, bassist and principal songwriter.<\/p>\n

The high court in London has been told that Sting has paid more than \u00a3500,000 (\u20ac577,100) to his former bandmates, Stewart Copeland and Andy Summers, since they brought the legal action.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt doesn\u2019t make any sense,\u201d he said when asked about the case. \u201cThat\u2019s all I\u2019m willing to say.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Last Ship will be at Theatre Royal Drury Lane from September 22nd to October 3rd. Tickets go on sale from midday on May 28th.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The fact many men no longer use their hands and physicality on a daily basis may be driving…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":506881,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[268],"tags":[434,18,117,19,17,19771,18797,393],"class_list":["post-506880","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-eire","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-newcastle","tag-sting","tag-united-kingdom"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116652190533424609","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/506880","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=506880"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/506880\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/506881"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=506880"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=506880"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=506880"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}