Review - Amazing Grace

I had an unexpected last-minute invitation from my Tony voter boss to join him at yesterday's matinee of the new musical Amazing Grace.  I've certainly heard about the show and I think I heard an original song or two from it several years ago, but thankfully I hadn't read any of the reviews before now.  I think it opened while I was in California and it slipped my mind.  I don't like to have reviews cluttering my brain when I go to see something, I like to have my own experience.  To be honest, I wasn't really expecting to enjoy Amazing Grace, but I do like the hymn, and I've always enjoyed stories about religion and faith, so I thought "why not?"

My instincts were pretty on the nose - I didn't really enjoy Amazing Grace, but I didn't exactly dislike it either.  It's an earnest, sincere story, with good performances, of a slave trader who renounces his old ways and becomes a famous-hymn-writing preacher.  The score was written by a first-time writer of musical theater, and while the music had some interesting and attractive moments, the lyrics were less successful and, on the whole, the score sounded like the work of a first-time writer.  Wisely (I think), they save the singing of the hymn "Amazing Grace" until the end of the show.  Its music and lyrics are far better than anything that preceded it.

The show is very well-sung, so that went a long way to making the songs sound better than they probably were, and also a long way towards making the show relatively enjoyable to sit through.  Josh Young (who I enjoyed in Jesus Christ Superstar a few seasons ago) played John Newton, the son of the owner of a slave trading company.  His father is played by Tom Hewitt, of whom I'm a big fan.  The father and son do not get along and haven't since the death of John's mother.  So, although it's in an anti-slavery setting, the show is really sort of about the reconciliation of a father and son, plus a love story, with a religious conversion thrown in. 

John is basically a jerk to everyone around him, disrespectful and headstrong.  He had a childhood romance with Mary Catlett, played by Erin Mackey.  Mary becomes a staunch abolitionist at the beginning of the musical, while John's conversion doesn't happen until nearly the very end of the show.  At one point, John is practically kidnapped into service in the Navy (this plot point didn't quite make sense to me).  Does he reform when he's taken prisoner with ropes and chains, like the black people his father's company has sold for many years?  No.  Does he reform when he's whipped, like the black people he's seen whipped?  No.  Does he reform when he's branded, like the black people he's branded in the name of his father's company?  No.  He just starts his own slave trading operation in Africa when he's shipwrecked there.  He finally reforms when he reads a letter from Mary and then survives another shipwreck.  I found that vaguely disturbing.

photo credit: Joan Marcus

Having a story about slavery, and seeing the evils of slavery depicted on stage, mainly to serve the purpose of redeeming the white characters, just bothers me.  Especially when the lead characters, the white characters, have stories that seem so insignificant next to the servant/slave characters.  Chuck Cooper brings so many layers of indignities and sacrifice to his performance as Thomas, John's family's manservant - his moment of forgiveness towards John was one of the only parts of the show that moved me.  And of course his singing was magnificent.  The only other moment was during "Yema's Song," delivered by Laiona Michelle as Nanna, Mary Catlett's maid.  Nanna had spent her life with Mary's family, hiding behind a façade, and when she told her horrible backstory, it was very powerful.

The physical production is very impressive and there's a scene/effect at the end of the first act that was visually stunning.  It was very exciting and was what kept me in my seat for the second act (I had considered leaving at intermission).  Unfortunately, the second act was much less successful than the first act; it suffered the rookie mistake problem of the set-up of a story being more interesting than the result.  And then to end the show with a happy ending for John and Mary, then basically have a narrator come out and say, "And then John and Mary got married.  He wrote over 200 hymns, one of them...this one," and then Josh Young did an a cappella version of "Amazing Grace."  Really?  We've been here two and a half hours at a show supposedly about the writing of this song and you save the song for the epilogue in a 'by the way, he also wrote this one' sort of way?  Very off-putting.  When they started singing it for the third time, my Tony voter boss and I made our way out of the theater.

I think I was the only one that was bothered, though.  Having already mentioned that I wasn't as moved as maybe I had hoped, I will say that I was in the minority.  There were crying seat neighbors all around me.  One gal behind me wasn't only crying, but she was talking back to the stage.  Of course, she had been doing that throughout.  One gal was sobbing inconsolably.  Then, during the second go-round of "Amazing Grace," most of the audience stood up to sing along.  When they started raising their arms in praise, I knew the show had affected them in a way that I wasn't getting.  And there's something powerful in that. 

Even though I've complained about a lot of the show, I did have a reasonably good time.  It told me a story I didn't know (though I've since discovered it fudged some facts, which seems disingenuous to me, but ok), and it was very well-performed.  Some of the songs were nice and I was kind of touched by how much it touched other people.  That kind of sincere response made me like Amazing Grace much better than Finding Neverland, say, which has a more cynical and smug quality to it.  At least in my opinion.  It's annoying to me that better-crafted musicals than Amazing Grace can't seem to make it on Broadway, but at least this show is giving its core audience exactly what they came for.