It was an award-winning book that charted high on the best-seller lists. Now it has been adapted for the stage for the first time - and the world premiere is in Portsmouth.

What's So Amazing About Grace? will use multi-media effects to tell Philip Yancey's story

Top Cat Theatre Company will perform ‘What’s So Amazing About Grace?’ by Philip Yancey at the Third Floor Arts Centre in Guildhall Square, at 7.30pm from March 29 until April 1. The play marks the company’s 10th anniversary.

The play mirrors the book in telling stories about forgiveness and grace from around the world to illustrate Yancey’s contention that grace is the distinctive thing about the Christian faith. It asks what grace actually looks like in the flesh – and why Christians are sometimes so bad at dispensing it.

It asks whether grace has a place in the midst of the Nazi holocaust or Klu Klux Klan brutality, and whether forgiveness should be shown to the unfaithful spouse, the racist or the terrorist. The action switches seamlessly from Danish village to working-class Chicago home, from the streets of Northern Ireland to a courtroom in South Africa.

Artistic director Neil Pugmire said: “The book is crammed with incredibly poignant, dramatic stories about the effect that forgiveness and unforgiveness have on both our own lives and world issues.

“We’re going to tell some of those stories, and put them in the context of Philip Yancey’s own life. He freely admits he wrote the book to explore what grace meant, as he’d not experienced much of it himself growing up as a Christian in the deep South of the 1960s.”

Top Cat Theatre Company was launched in 1996 with the family show Angel At Large. Since then, it has staged a diverse range of plays - from the CS Lewis classic The Screwtape Letters to the family Christmas show Scrub That Manger!, and from real-life stories of asylum seekers in Exile to the futuristic children’s show The Adventures of the J Team.

The group includes Christians from churches across Portsmouth. Past members and supporters have been invited to a 10th birthday party ahead of the final show on April 1.

Tickets for What’s So Amazing About Grace? - which cost £6 (£5 concessions) - can be booked on 023-9268 8070. For more information about the company, see: www.topcattheatre.com.