Amazing Grace reviews — Page 4

Sorry for trying to be honest with you. Do what you want. When you live closer to the theater scene you get a better view on things

Enjoy yourself with whatever you do. Hopefully someone will give you the answer you want.

Updated On: 7/17/15 at 12:09 PM

Looks like they are trying to make a run out of it. Big mistake but wish them luck.

Updated On: 7/17/15 at 01:55 PM

Just feel bad for them, it's like it's a trainwreck about to happen, what with the abysmal box office and the tepid reviews.

With all the blood, sweat and tears obviously put into it, a Broadway flop has to be one of the most heartbreaking of show biz fates.

Will "Amazing Grace" even get a cast album recording if it closes in week?

Remember when you were so excited for LIVING ON LOVE and then it closed and everyone was so happy that you'd never be able to see it?

That was fun.

Having worked on productions that have ranged from wonderful to terrible I would say there is a certain blindness that sets in when you have been working on one project for any length of time. Just like a parent can't always see (or admit) the faults in their children that are so glaringly obvious to others. Love can make you do strange things.

And, as this very board proves, taste is subjective. What one person praises another person damns.

And though it's easy for us to say "oh, making such and such a change would fix everything" it's still just theories. The creative team may have attempted to make some of these fixes and found that though they worked on paper and in theory they didn't fix the problems in practice.

okay well guess what, I'm definitely seeing Amazing Grace sooo. Have you seen it Jordan or are you passing on this one lol

ooo good!! did you see it yet, or are you waiting to get a free ticket???

I was there last night at opening. Very appreciative crowd, for sure, but I take it that it was mostly for the cast who is uniformly strong. I just wish they were given a far better show. First off, credit must be given to the orchestrator Kenny Seymour for making a wholly generic score far better than it is.

For a show entitled Amazing Grace, you learn absolutely nothing about the song, its origins, or anything leading up to it. The beautifully effective final tableau of Act 1 with the shipwreck is ruined by some campy chorus "ahh's" that sound like they came straight out of The Little Mermaid. The tacked on ending is so utterly ridiculous, rushed, and forced that it's like watching a SparkNotes version of a musical. The whole bit of narration at the end with "ohh by the way, he also wrote Amazing Grace 30 years after the proceedings you just witnessed" just feels so out of place.

The production looks beautiful, and there are some lovely performances (especially from the supporting characters), but I just kept thinking "What?!" and "Why?!" the entire evening. I bet this will do well with big church groups, though, who will appreciate its "message."

For those who feel you learn absolutely nothing about the song, I can see why you say that. However, we are given a few hints throughout. I caught them when I saw it. I think the problem is that they were not more obvious. I was thinking that the orchestra could have underscored 2 of them with the melody as we know it or somehow blended in with the girl with the flute. Maybe even played the music to the part of the song he was reading from the book. It may have helped make it clearer as to where the song came from. I do remembef hearing the music once but can't remember when! JMO

"I bet this will do well with big church groups"

All I can say is, if you are going to win that bet, they'd better hurry. Buses will need to be lined up all the way to the Lincoln Tunnel to make a dent in this show's misfortunes.

musikman is exactly right. It's not like I expected to see anything as in depth as Georges Seurat creating his famous painting, but considering how many songs Newton wrote I assumed we would at least get to see some of the development of the hymn, even if in the most generic ways possible. The tagline is, "The song the world knows, the story it doesn't" after all.

I don't even think the creators make a strong enough case the events they show on stage directly inspired the words of Amazing Grace. It would be like watching a 2.5 hr play about Sondheim and his relationship with his mother only to have a character walk out at the end and say, "By the way, this man eventually became a composer and wrote The Ladies Who Lunch (implying that the troubled relationship with his mother inspired Joanne's song). Let's sing it for you now."

The song was written decades after the events depicted in the musical and an number of things in the intervening years could have provided the real motivation for the song. If this was a court of law I don't think the authors proved beyond a reasonable doubt that this was the story behind the song, which makes the tacked on feeling of the epilogue even more pronounced.

Could this be the next Scandalous? Where you had a lot of will from upstairs to keep it open and money from gullible brain washed people, who put money in a collection dish.