The Sting in Richard Fleeshman's performance in shipbuilding musical The Last Ship

Such was the reaction to this agit-prop piece of musical theatre in the Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht tradition – standing ovations all round – that tickets are now selling fast for next week's shows.

Prompted by growing up amid the turmoil of the ship-building industry in Wallsend, Tyne and Wear, in the 1950s, Sting has unlocked his memory box for his debut stage musical.

His grandfather was a shipwright, and Sting could see the ships being built at the end of his street, an image that has stayed with him down the years, leading to The Police frontman telling "the proud story of when the last ship sails".

Returning to his roots, Sting depicts the collective defiance of a community facing the demise of the shipbuilding industry in the Thatcher era, alongside a poignant romantic tale of childhood sweethearts and the adults they become.

The show first opened on Broadway in 2014 in Sting's adopted home city of New York, but his rising tide of Geordie anger better suits its homecoming with a cast led by Joe McGann, Charlie Hardwick and Richard Fleeshman under the direction of Northern Stage artistic director Lorne Campbell.

It will surely resonate as loudly in York - a city close to the Yorkshire mines that were shut down at the same time that shipbuilding was turning to rust in the North East - as it did in the industrial heartlands of Newcastle and Leeds.

Fleeshman plays Gideon Fletcher, the character closest to Sting both in his singing voice and in his desire to escape the shipyard community yet drawn back to his native North East years later (after being at sea in the Royal Navy).

Richard Fleeshman and Frances McNamee in The Last Ship. Picture: Pamela Raith

"I don't think you need to have lived something or somewhere to have empathy for it, even though it's very specific story, but globally it's all about the importance of communities," says Richard, the Cheshire-born son of actors David Fleeshman and Sue Jenkins.

Campbell's production manages to combine intimate exchanges with scenes and emotions on an epic scale. "All the characters have their own challenges, but the scale of the shipbuilding set is vast too, and without a doubt we find different levels within the show, especially for the important two-hander scenes that play really well in the smaller venues and the bigger, ensemble scenes in the bigger venues," he says.

"And though it's being called a musical, there are long scenes of dialogue so I see it more as a play with songs." 

Fleeshman has an ear for accents to go with the innate musicality in his voice. "There are always subtle differences when you're playing someone who's been away; his accent will have softened, so we decided Gideon's accent would still have the roots of his Geordie identity up to the age of 16, where like Scottish and Irish accents, it's so strong that it tends not to fade but it's less strong than those around him."

As for singing in a timbre similar to Sting, Richard says: "I didn't consciously think beforehand 'I'm going to sing like Sting', but when I heard his demos of the songs, I heard them in the dialect he uses and my character is an avatar for Sting in the story, but at the same time I've brought my own slant to it."

Come Monday, both Richard and his father David will be in York as Fleeshman senior is in the southern company for Shakespeare's Rose Theatre at the Castle car park, playing Stanley in Richard III and Friar Laurence in Romeo And Juliet. "He's been looking after my cat and staying with my girlfriend while rehearsing in London," says Richard. "I don't see enough of my dad as we're both busy with our acting, so it'll be lovely to catch up with him."

The Last Ship, York Theatre Royal, June 25 to 30, 7.30pm nightly, plus 2pm Thursday and 2.30pm Saturday matinees. Box ofice: 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk. Tickets update: selling well but still available for all performances.