"Wicked" and "Amazing Grace," Excellent Musicals!

Caption: Maria Conzemius riding back from “Wicked” to the Hampton in Chelsea Hotel in a bicycle taxi on a beautiful summer evening with a gentle breeze blowing and cabs, buses, trucks, limos, cars, and other bicycle taxis coming within an inch of my taxi and its driver, an African man who was a very strong rider. He gently encouraged me not to scream during the first two of a number of close calls. All will be well, he assured me.

After catching a motorized cab from my hotel, the Hampton in Chelsea, to the Gershwin Theater at 222 West 51st Street in New York City, I rode back to my hotel in a bicycle cab. With the weather as mild and pleasant in New York as it is in Iowa, a gentle breeze blowing in the evening air, riding in a bicycle taxi was the perfect end to a perfect evening.

“Wicked” is mostly fun and fanciful. It’s perfectly appropriate for children. In fact, I would encourage you to bring your children. They will relate. The evil of bullying is a strong theme. The importance of being who you are no matter no matter how odd you are or what the costs is reinforced.

“Wicked” topped the reviews.

“Amazing Grace” was further down in the reviews, but I knew the story, and I was determined to see it. I knew that my favorite hymn was written by a former slave ship captain who repented his evil ways and wrote “Amazing Grace,” referring in the hymn to “a wretch like me” for good reason.

What I didn’t know was that the composer’s father was a wealthy admiral in the Navy, a stern, even cruel man, and that his mother died when he was young, leading to the composer’s feckless, alcoholic youth and rough treatment from his father. The composer gave up his song-writing and turned to the slave trade as a hard-nosed way to make money and escape his father’s expectations that he go to school.

He forbade his beautiful, kind-hearted wife from witnessing slave auctions, but she attended one anyway and was horrified. She became a secret and then not-so-secret abolitionist and soon found herself in a heap of political and legal trouble. The story continues with twists and turns that are almost as unbelievable as those in “Wicked.”

But they say truth is stranger than fiction.

“Wicked” is a lot of fun and also has substance. “Amazing Grace” is excellent and has even more substance. Do go see both if you have a chance to.