Sting and the cast of ''The Last Ship'' are booked onto the Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon for October 16th.

A few people I know had the same idea last and hied themselves over to the Neil Simon Theater on West 52nd St. to see a preview of Sting and Joe Mantello's ''The Last Ship.'' The show, which got raves in Chicago over the summer, started performances last week with a circle around October 26th for its big opening. So funny to spot the other skulkers who came to see whether rumors of the show's seaworthiness were true. They are indeed. ''The Last Ship'' is even in much better shape than when I saw it in Chicago. Writer John Logan (whom I spotted darting about with a clipboard) has significantly changed the show’s opening, beefed up the back story and entry of the main character, Gideon, sung by the stunning Michael Esper...

Jimmy Nail was having an out-of-body moment. His lanky frame was folded in an armchair in the low-ceilinged basement lounge of the Neil Simon Theater for an interview, but his tired eyes suddenly searched the room's four corners, as if he were trying to see beyond its walls: back to Newcastle-on-Tyne, back to the shipyards where he and the men of his family once toiled. "I worked on big turbines that propelled the supertankers," said Mr. Nail, the son of a shipyard foreman who plays one in the new musical "The Last Ship," which has songs by another Newcastle native with a sharp-edged moniker, Sting. "You had a turbine shed that might have been four times the length of this room, and in the middle of it was a turbine, and men were crawling all over it like ants, welding it and polishing it."