Amazing Grace is a new original musical based on the awe-inspiring true story behind the world's most beloved song. A captivating tale of romance, rebellion and redemption, this radiant production follows one man whose incredible journey ignited a historic wave of change.
John Newton (Tony Award nominee Josh Young), a willful and musically talented young Englishman, faces a future as uncertain as the turning tide. Coming of age as Britain sits atop an international empire of slavery, he finds himself torn between following in the footsteps of his father-a slave trader-or embracing the more compassionate views of his childhood sweetheart (Erin Mackey). Accompanied by his slave, Thomas (Tony Award winner Chuck Cooper), John embarks on a perilous voyage on the high seas. When that journey finds John in his darkest hour, a transformative moment of self-reckoning inspires a blazing anthem of hope that will finally guide him home.
More to the point, 'Amazing Grace' focuses on Newton as a bratty young man in the 1740s, when he was truly the self-proclaimed 'wretch' of that hymn's first stanza. The spiritual -- recently sung by the president at a eulogy for the Charleston shooting victims -- isn't heard until the musical's final moments. Writer Smith (sharing book credit with Arthur Giron) piles on a lot to explain why John is a rebellious man: His mother died when he was young ... His love interest, Mary (the appealing Erin Mackey, of 'Chaplin'), comes from a broken family that wants to marry her off to a pompous British major (Chris Hoch)...Because most of the relationships are musical theater tropes, they tend to drag on the pacing. The tone of scenes in the first act oscillates wildly, from striking and severe -- particularly the difficult images of chained slaves being branded -- to overly smug and smirky (Hoch is fun, though he seems to be channeling King George from 'Hamilton'). The songs are confident, if not quite memorable -- the best being 'Truly Alive,' early on.
Amazing Grace, a new musical purporting to tell the story of the 18th-century British abolitionist John Newton, is the 'first work of professional writing' by Christopher Smith, a 45-year-old former police officer from suburban Philadelphia. (He wrote the music and lyrics himself and co-wrote the book with the more experienced playwright Arthur Giron.) What he has somehow gotten produced, and offered with good intentions to Broadway audiences and critics, is the equivalent of a child's drawing: naïve, sincere, glowing with an unimpeachable if hard-to-pin-down vision of what it wants to be. (I'd guess that it wants to be a Christian family entertainment with a bold message about the power of redemption.) It is also a confusing cartoon so lacking in craft that it ruins any chance of being taken seriously. Certainly it can't be recommended as history; it's riddled with falsehoods that alone would sink it. But it also fails as musical theater, on two counts: the music and the theater.
2014 | Chicago |
World Premiere Production Chicago |
2015 | Broadway |
Original Broadway Production Broadway |
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