Veteran rocker Sting has signed on to score an upcoming musical by award-winning playwright Brian Yorkey.
Next to Normal creator Yorkey and the Police frontman have teamed up to stage The Last Ship, which will centre around lead character Gideon - a man who grew up around the shipyards of Newcastle, England - the same city Sting hails from.
But Yorkey insists the project is still in its infancy.
He tells the New York Times, "(It's still in the) 'throw it up against the wall and see what sticks' (phase). It's Sting's first foray into writing for musical theatre, so we wanted to start having him meet actors and hear them sing at the earliest possible point.
"I won't say the score is complete because the score's not complete until God knows when. But he's written a couple dozen, maybe 20, 24, amazing new songs for the show. He's writing great theatre music. It's very, very distinctly Sting but it also is theatre music. It's not just pop music transposed into the theatre."
Readings for the play will begin in October (11).
Sting isn't the only rocker to compose a score for a play - U2's Bono and The Edge lent their musical talents to the much-maligned and now widely-popular Broadway show Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark.