Amazing Grace

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Amazing Grace

Nederlander Theatre, NYC, July 23, 2015

Reviewed by Elizabeth Ahlfors for Cabaret Scenes

Josh Young and Erin Mackey Photo: Joan Marcus
Josh Young and Erin Mackey
Photo: Joan Marcus

At the Nederlander Theatre, Amazing Grace could be the answer to the investors’ $16-million-dollar prayers, an audience magnet, a swashbuckling historical musical with romance, villains, hurricanes and all the trimmings, with a serious message of evil and redemption. The eponymous title song is a beloved hymn with words (but not melody) written in the 18th century by a British slave trader turned minister/abolitionist/hymn writer, John Newton.

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Kind of intriguing, right?

Not really. Even with its outstanding company, grand dramatic staging and  unbeatable singers, Amazing Grace feels more like Les Miz gone bad.

Former Philadelphia police officer Christopher Smith composed the original music and lyrics and co-wrote the book with Arthur Giron with emphasis more on adventure than actuality.

The book, semi-biographical, is an overblown melodrama with stilted dialogue and clumsy transitions. Much of the music is mediocre with garden-variety lyrics.

Directed by Gabriel Barre (Lippa’s The Wild Party), Amazing Grace is set in the seaport town of Chatham. Josh Young (Jesus Christ Superstar) as reckless John Newton, opens the show with one of the better songs, “Truly Alive.” Against his father’s (Tom Hewitt) wishes, John refuses to work in the family’s slave-trading company, determined to follow his own bliss. Ironically, moments later, in one of the show’s most horrific scenes, John commandeers his father’s latest shipload of caged slaves heading for the auction block and branding. Secretly watching is John’s love interest, Mary Catlett, played by soprano Erin Mackey (Chaplin), who is then inspired to join the rising abolitionist movement. While disappointed in John, she always remembers his potential, illustrated in a radiant rendition of “Voices of the Angels.”

A series of life-altering adventures follows. John is captured by the Royal Navy, beaten and taken to sea along with Thomas, the devoted slave who raised him, played by Chuck Cooper (The Life). A storm comes up, all are thrown overboard and, with stunning theatricality, John feels himself drowning when Thomas’s hand suddenly grabs on and pulls him to the surface.

There’s more. On the shores of Sierra Leone, they are captured by Princess Peyai (Harriet D. Foy), a ruthless, comic-strip tribal leader with an eye for show-biz fashion and making money. John is put to work as a slave overseer and ordered to send his faithful Thomas to Barbados.

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Here Cooper gets a chance to show his robust bass baritone in a moving “Nowhere Left to Run.”

More to come—a hurricane, battles and John’s illness. The book alternates between John’s adventures and Chatham, but, finally, John is rescued by his father and put on a ship home after heading to Barbados to find Thomas.  Now broken and depressed, Thomas is unwilling to forgive John for his betrayal, but, eventually, Thomas, now called Pakuteh, agrees to join him

In 1748 and back in England with Mary, John is redeemed enough to begin his evangelical/hymn-writing career. However, since the book is semi-biographical, it does not reveal that John still continued his slave trading business. Even after a stroke in 1754, it was another decade before he publicly condemned slavery.

Eugene Lee and Edward Pierce designed an eye-catching set centered on a clipper ship. Electrifying lighting by Ken Billington and Paul Miller with Jon Weston’s sound design are juiced to the max. Period costumes for Mary are lushly detailed by Toni-Leslie James, who later used the whole box of crayons for Princess Peyai’s African dancers, but the African tribal dances choreographed by Christopher Gattelli resembled something from a colorized Tarzan.

There is a payoff at the end, however, with the simple hymn “Amazing Grace” staged splendidly and sung by the entire cast in their glorious voices, harmonically nuanced, lovely and meaningful.

Elizabeth Ahlfors

Born and raised in New York, Elizabeth graduated from NYU with a degree in Journalism. She has lived in various cities and countries and now is back in NYC. She has written magazine articles and published three books: A Housewife’s Guide to Women’s Liberation, Twelve American Women, and Heroines of ’76 (for children). A great love was always music and theater—in the audience, not performing. A Philadelphia correspondent for Theatre.com and InTheatre Magazine, she has reviewed theater and cabaret for the Philadelphia Inquirer and Philadelphia City News. She writes for Cabaret Scenes and other cabaret/theater sites. She is a judge for Nightlife Awards and a voting member of Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle.