Earlier this month Goodspeed Musicals announced the third of the three shows planned for its 2011-12 season at its Goodspeed Opera House home base. Yesterday they announced the second of the three shows which will play its smaller and more progressive space, the Norma Terris Theatre in Chester.
The show is Amazing Grace, based on the life of the British minister and abolitionist who composed the tune that gives the musical its title. John Newton (1725-1807) had other hit hymns, such as “Glorious Things of Thee Are Spoken,” and wrote the bestselling pamphlet Thoughts Upon the Slave Trade.
This is one of those projects that’s already been drumming up attention for itself. Amazing Grace has a website at http://agmusical.com with biographies of its entire creative team.
Interest in Newton, a onetime slave trader who renounced that profession and found religion, has been intense in recent years. Since 2006, there’ve been two films (Amazing Grace, starring Albert Finney, and The Amazing Grace, starring Nick Moran) and a play (African Snow by Murray Watts) inspired by Newton’s life. The musical takes a new tack—its narrative voice is female, that of Newton’s “childhood friend Mary Catlett, the woman who never lost faith in him and whose love, courage and unshakable conviction helped to transform his life.”
Amazing Grace’s composer/lyricist is Christopher Smith. A reading of Amazing Grace in New York attracted Lambs Theatre Company founder Carolyn Rossi Copeland, who’s now attached as the show’s producer.
Gabriel Barre, a Goodspeed regular for much of the ‘90s—as both director and actor—is slated to direct.
The rest of the team, according to the Amazing Grace website:
Arthur Giron (book co-author), prolific playwright and former head of the graduate playwriting program at Carnegie Mellon University.
Kimberly Grigsby (music supervisor), whose Broadway conducting credits include Spiderman: Turn Off the Dark, The Light in the Piazza, Caroline or Change and Spring Awakening.
Jodie Moore (music director), another busy Broadway conductor (of American Idiot, Spring Awakening, Hair and Hairspray) who’s also been on the road with several national Broadway tours.
Beowulf Boritt (set designer) who has the coolest name ever. He designed productions of Pippin(directed by Gabriel Barre) and Abyssinia for the Goodspeed five or six years ago, and has since done a slew of big Broadway shows (Rock of Ages, Scottsboro Boys, 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee) and dozens of Off Broadway things.
Toni-Leslie James (costume designer), the Obie-winning designer of the duds in everything from Angels in America to several August Wilson plays, and who outfitted The Old Masters at Long Wharf Theatre last season.
Kenny Seymour (orchestrator), the veteran soul/R&B arranger and performer who was the music director for the Broadway hit Memphis. Seymour’s got the coolest pedigree: his mother was in the original Broadway cast of Hair, while his father was in an early ‘60s line-up of Little Anthony & The Imperials.
Benoit-Swan Pouffer (choreographer), who danced with Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre and Donald Byrd/The Group before becoming a stage & film choreographer.
Amazing Grace will play Goodspeed Musicals’ Norma Terris Theatre May 17 to June 10—the middle of the season, which will end in November with the musicalization of Julie Andrews’ book The Great American Mousical (directed by Andrews). The first slot in the 2012 Norma Terris season has yet to be announced.