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Amazing Grace: A Stirring New Musical

“Amazing grace! How sweet the sound

That saved a wretch like me!

I once was lost, but now am found;

Was blind, but now I see.”

Christopher Smith had never written a musical when he got the idea for writing Amazing Grace. He was a police officer in suburban Philadelphia who also worked with young people at a church when he stumbled across a children’s book about the 18th-century slave trader John Newton, whose redemption at sea led him to write the beloved Christian hymn “Amazing Grace”.

“A light bulb went off in my head,” said Smith of the epiphany he felt on reading the book. He knew the song, of course, and its power to touch and inspire—a power that spanned over three centuries—but the nearly forgotten man behind it was a mystery. The book changed all that.

“One man’s experience encapsulated all that we feel,” he said. “We want to be loved in spite of our faults and when we go off in the wrong direction, we can pull back and our lives can still have some worth.”

Still, taking on a full-scale musical is a massive commitment and Smith had understandable concerns when it came down to overcoming his inexperience: he had written songs and sung in a band in his teens but could not read music; he had studied acting briefly in college but sensed he didn’t belong onstage. Overall, his was not the resume of a budding Sondheim. Nonetheless, he pursued his lofty goal.

“My wife told me, `It’s your idea, you have to do it,’ ” he said. And so the challenge began.

For a decade, Smith devoted himself to learning how to write and structure a musical. This was followed by the fiscal nuts and bolts of spending the next few years, seeking investors who understood both him and his vision—a venture that led to a 2012 production at the Tony-winning Goodspeed Musicals in Connecticut.

And as a former cop with an “impossible dream,” he felt that watching the show come alive “was surreal...like having your first game being the Super Bowl. Wow!”

That first step accomplished, the production moved forward and last fall the show had a pre-Broadway run in Chicago before transferring to Broadway’s Nederlander Theatre (official opening is July 16th).

The story behind the beloved hymn comes alive in Amazing Grace. (Photo: Joan Marcus)

Set in England and Africa with a soaring score by Smith—and a book that he co-authored with playwright/Ensemble Studio founder Arthur Giron—Amazing Grace tracks the youthful Newton (a spellbinding Josh Young) rebellious son of a stodgy, slave-trading father (Tony nominee Tom Hewitt) to cruel seller of slaves himself. Abolitionists ask Newton’s girlfriend, Mary (the lovely soprano Erin Mackey) to bring their cause to a visiting royal, but to do so she must feign a romance with one extremely vain and foppish major (Chris Hoch).

Across the Atlantic, Newton is captured in Sierra Leone by Princess Peyai— played with flamboyant feral menace by Harriett D. Foy—who enslaves and sells her own people and makes the gullible Newton her overseer. Further plot twists lead to his turn to God—and the inevitable, beautiful performance of the musical’s title song.

But the conscience of Amazing Grace is Thomas (Chuck Cooper who picked up a Tony for The Life in 1997), the slave who raised Newton. He is captured, along with Newton and is subjected to new, if familiar, savagery. Cooper’s powerful presence gives gravitas to the anguish of his life and slavery.

Thomas’s role has been expanded from Chicago to hone the show’s point of view. “We needed someone to go on John’s journey with him and provide the moral authority to explain John’s life,” concluded Smith. “My decision was to give him the reins and the back story to support his character. He [Thomas] becomes the real narrator.”

Amazing Grace officially opens July 16th at Nederlander Theatre which is currently located at 208 W. 41st St. Call 866-870-2717 or visit amazinggracemusical.com for more information

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