Sting’s musical cri de coeur about his Tyneside home patch is not by any means a bad piece of work. It is, however, beset by characteristics which, once noticed, cannot be unnoticed however hard you try. There now follows a succession of “but”s which would impress a pugnacious billygoat.

Sting’s songs – many premièred on his 2013 album of the same title, some dating back to the early 1990s when this idea had its genesis – avoid being either effortful stage-musical fare or rock numbers trying to be theatrical. The musical idiom has a pleasing Celtic twang to it, and on occasion, impressively, the abrasive sweetness of Kurt Weill.  But once you spot the characteristically Stingy vocal lines, they hound you, particularly in the case of Richard Fleeshman as Gideon, whose singing style is mid-Atlantic rather than Geordie. Some of the most powerful vocal work comes when performers are less concerned with polished singing than just letting rip and, as my mother would have put it, guldering.

The lyrics can simply try too hard. In general they strive and fail more in the romantic strand of the plot – Gideon returns to his Wallsend shipbuilding community 17 years after running away to sea to find that his teenage beloved, Meg, wants nothing to do with him and has not even told their daughter of his identity. Conversely, there is a greater honesty and directness to the political aspect: the shipyard, the only industry in town, is about to be closed as another victim of 1980s Thatcherism, until the workers resolve to occupy the yard and finish their final commission. However, even here Sting can overreach himself: the first time the workers sang defiantly “We’ll conjure up a ship where there used to be a hole”, I nearly laughed out loud.

Director Lorne Campbell has simplified and refocused the show’s book from the version seen to only modest acclaim in the US in 2014. He adroitly marshals a cast including Joe McGann as the yard’s foreman, Frances McNamee as Meg and Katie Moore as rebellious daughter Ellie, on a set by 59 Productions that blends an industrial superstructure with a host of evocative projections. But when the show dodges the problem of how to handle its ending by simply not having one, it becomes obvious that basically the whole tale is a threadbare illusion. Sting seems to be trying to out-Lee Hall his fellow north-easterner in terms of overtly collectivist theatrical message, but all it really boils down to is that late-20^th-century American cliché that firm conviction and follow-through will surely take you places. And that, for all the skill and dedication employed here, comes precious close to making a mockery of the people and spirit it claims to celebrate.

Written for the Financial Times.