'Leap Of Faith' Jumps Into The Fire! REVIEWS

[MamasDoin'Fine]

Posted: 4/26/12 at 10:40pm

The New York Times:

Sneaky Preacher, Without a Prayer

by Ben Brantley

Say amen, somebody. Or, better yet, just whimper the word. We’ve finally come to the end of a hard-run overcrowded spring on Broadway. And here, to sound the final trumpet, is one last musical, a show that appropriately expresses how many a dedicated theatergoer must be feeling right now: plumb tuckered out.

Praise the Lord, and pass the amphetamines. “Leap of Faith,” which opened on Thursday night at the St. James Theater, uses the religious revival meeting as both its subject and its form. Yet reviving (or revivifying or inspiriting) is hardly the right adjective for it. Starring Raúl Esparza and based on the 1992 movie of the same title, “Leap of Faith” is this season’s black hole of musical comedy, sucking the energy out of anyone who gets near it.

That includes its unfortunate cast. It’s not that the ensemble members, directed by Christopher Ashley and choreographed by Sergio Trujillo, don’t work up a sweat, clappin’ their hands and slappin’ their thighs and raisin’ their voices. But you can feel that the force isn’t with them. As its title promises, “Leap of Faith” has a fair amount of leaping. The faith part is another matter.

Featuring songs by Alan Menken (music) and Glenn Slater (lyrics), with a book by Janus Cercone and Warren Leight, “Leap of Faith” tells the redemptive story of Jonas Nightingale (Mr. Esparza), a con-man evangelist who is forced to re-examine his wicked ways. (Well, maybe it’s a redemptive story; it’s typical of the show’s bad faith that it hedges its bets.)

Jonas (who was portrayed by Steve Martin in the film) is a figure with a long and nobly ignoble ancestry in the theater, the irresistible charlatan. He’s a type whose very existence depends on his ability to charm a crowd, to whip up emotions, to make us suspend disbelief. He is, in other words, showbiz incarnate.

Celebrated variations on this scam artist have been deployed for purposes sentimental (the title characters of “The Music Man” and “The Rainmaker”), cynical (the grandstanding lawyer Billy Flynn in “Chicago”) and somewhere in between (the leading louts of “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels”). But wherever their hearts lie, these great pretenders can usually be relied on to raise the adrenaline in a room.

If they’re really well portrayed, especially on the stage, they operate on several levels at once, as deceivers (that is, actors) playing deceivers who get caught up in their own deceptions. Such performances leave us dizzy, giddy and feeling darn lucky that we’ve been had.

Mr. Esparza would seem to be a natural for such a part. His onstage energy quotient is usually off the charts. He was terrific as the forked-lightning-tongued studio executive in the 2008 revival of David Mamet’s “Speed-the-Plow” and, in a more introspective mode, as the commitment-fearing urbanite in John Doyle’s 2006 production of “Company.” Artfully mix traits from each and, in theory, you’d come up with Jonas Nightingale, a self-questioning seller of hope.

Yet here Mr. Esparza seems to keep a chilly distance from his character, and you realize the degree to which self-consciousness has always been a part of his performances. In “Faith” doubt emanates from his every pore, from his contemptuously curled mouth to his fast robotic line readings. This is not, to put it mildly, the right frame of mind for selling religion from a revival tent (designed by Robin Wagner).

The people that Jonas — aided by his manager and kid sister, Sam (Kendra Kassebaum) — is trying to dupe are the citizens of Sweetwater, Kan., a cornfed place crippled by drought and unemployment. Though the townsfolk don’t have much money, Jonas is convinced that he and his choir, the Angels of Mercy (led by Ida Mae Sturdevant, played by Kecia Lewis-Evans) can induce them to pour what little they have into his collection plates.

One hitch, though. There’s a skeptic in Sweetwater, a beautiful woman who has gone for too long without love. Shades of Marian the librarian! But Marla McGowan (Jessica Phillips, who looks and acts as if she has just been dry-cleaned) is no book tender but the town sheriff, who has the power to put Jonas in jail.

She also has a 13-year-old son, brave little Jake (Talon Ackerman), who has lost the use of his legs in the car accident that conveniently took the life of Marla’s husband. Jake believes in miracles, and Jake believes in Jonas.

Say, you ain’t buying this guff, are you? Well, maybe you would if anyone onstage seemed to. I still shed a tear or two whenever the 1962 film of “The Music Man,” starring Robert Preston, shows up on television. But “Faith” recycles its clichés without a shred of true conviction.

Its jokes, its romantic scenes, its dance numbers, its interchangeable songs by Mr. Menken (also represented on Broadway this season by the hyper-peppy “Newsies the Musical” ) all feel as if they had been pasted into place the night before. (An example of what passes for wit in Mr. Slater’s lyrics: “Honey, even Helen Keller could see through you.”)

Even the pacing of the show is self-defeating. No sooner does a dance number start to get a groove on — as in “Dancin’ in the Devil’s Shoes” led by the appealing Leslie Odom Jr., and Krystal Joy Brown — than it changes direction and peters out.

Gospel is not Mr. Esparza’s strong suit. When he belts out raise-your-hands invocations to divinity, he sounds like a second-tier Tina Turner impersonator. He at last comes into his own in the show’s penultimate number, the ardently delivered “Jonas’ Soliloquy,” in which he begs, “Give me something to believe in.”

The audience has been silently asking the same thing for the previous two hours. But in “Leap of Faith” that prayer remains unanswered.

@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@

USA Today:

'Leap of Faith' doesn't quite soar

by Elysa Gardner

In the musical production that opened Thursday at the St. James Theatre, a slick con man and serial seducer arrives in a small town, intent on swindling the local folk for all they're worth. He nearly succeeds, but ends up falling for the smart, lonely woman who's on to him.

No, it's not a revival of The Music Man; it's the new Leap of Faith (* * ½ out of four), based on the 1992 film of the same name. And while it's a more imaginative and entertaining film adaptation than another recent Broadway entry, Ghost the Musical, Faith hardly seems destined for the American musical-theater canon.

In the movie, Steve Martin played Jonas Nightingale, a phony preacher who gets stuck with his wily female sidekick in drought-addled Kansas. Conflicts emerge when Jonas and the sidekick develop feelings for, respectively, a jaded waitress and the disapproving town sheriff.

The musical — with a book by original screenwriter Janus Cercone and Side Man playwright Warren Leight— fuses the latter two characters into a female sheriff, Marla, whose son, confined to a wheelchair after a car accident, takes a shine to Jonas. (The boy was the waitress' younger brother on screen, and used leg braces.) The sidekick is now Jonas's sister, and thus shares the troubled family background that led him to a life of fraud; and we learn more about a few of the singing "Angels of Mercy" who abet them.

The show is also set in the present, and begins and ends with Jonas addressing theatergoers, narrating his own tale of sin and redemption. Revival meetings are reflected on TV screens as actors rush through the aisles, chatting and seeking donations. (Funny money is distributed in the orchestra section before the curtain.)

The result is an odd, uneasy mix of souped-up razzle-dazzle and earnest romantic drama, each of which can be affecting at points. Leading man Raul Esparza, one of Broadway's most naturally charismatic performers, gives Jonas a human side to juxtapose his cheesy stage persona; he and Jessica Phillips, as Marla, can actually seem like sensitive, intelligent adults.

Jonas and Marla's unlikely courtship is saddled with some too-cute touches, though. Glenn Slater provides winking, metaphor-laden lyrics for their duets. ("Even Helen Keller could see through you," she sings to him at one point.) The better songs showcase composer Alan Menken's enduring melodic savvy and ability to fold gospel and R&B textures into show tunes with relative grace.

Like many contemporary musicals, Faith ultimately works best as a showcase for its talented cast. The excellent players also include Kecia Lewis-Evans, who as one of Jonas' Angels brings dynamism and dignity to the stock supporting role of big-voiced earth mama. As her grown son and daughter, Leslie Odom, Jr. and Krystal Joy Brown both prove supple singers and fluid dancers.

Their contributions help lift Faith above its uneven aspects and become, if not a rapturous experience, a compelling curiosity.


@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@

New York Daily News

Raul Esparza's a blessing as fake healer, but Broadway musical hasn't got a prayer

by Joe

** (out of 5)

Jeez, even the climactic thunderstorm is a letdown in “Leap of Faith.” You can see the water jets — where’s the fun in that?

Sorry if that’s a spoiler, but nothing happens in this frustrating and manipulative new Broadway musical based on a 1992 Steve Martin movie you don’t see coming a mile away.

What is surprising is how infrequently songs by Alan Menken (music) and Glenn Slater (lyrics) make you sit up and take notice.

Is this the same duo that packed “Sister Act” with tasty disco-pop tunes The composer who wrote the memorable melodies for “Newsies”? It is.

There are some rousing, albeit repetitive, gospel numbers, each accompanied by Sergio Trujillo’s gyrating dancing. And the sweet country-and-Western-flavored “Long Past Dreamin’” is a real keeper. Otherwise, the score is as striking as dust in a drought-ravaged Kansas town.

That’s where phony faith healer Jonas Nightingale (Raul Esparza, of “Company” and “Arcadia”) and his band of “angels” pitch their tent after a bus breakdown. They’re soon fleecing poor local yokels in their revival meetings.

Enter sheriff Marla McGowan (a likable low-key Jessica Phillips). She’s got Nightingale’s number, but she’s also a lonely widow with a disabled son, Jake (Talon Ackerman), turned on by Jonas and his many sleeveless T-shirts. “Smart Women, Foolish Choices” was a non-issue when Liam Neeson wore the badge on the big screen in 1992.

Te sex change is one of several tweaks by Janus Cercone, who wrote the original screenplay, and Warren Leight. Now, Jonas has a sister, Sam (Kendra Kassebaum), and a boo-hoo childhood to lend a shred of psychological background. Unfortunately, there are also too many secondary characters and gaps in logic, such as Jonas’ gang not knowing he’s a con man. Huh?

Director Christopher Ashley has previously done fine work guiding “Memphis” and “All Shook Up.” But he doesn’t get a handle on this production, which he inherited after a 2010 Los Angeles tryout. It feels out of sync.

Ragtag “angels” look so slick that they could’ve come from blowouts and seaweed wraps at a spa. Even the always reliable William Ivey Long has fashioned costumes that are head-scratchers. Kassebaum’s Stevie Nicks-style frock cries out for an exorcism.

As the flimflammer in the mirror-ball jacket at the center of all of this, Esparza is full of the devil. He pushes his vocals to the roof, sometimes squeezing his pipes into Patti LaBelle squeals. He stalks the stage with pursed lips and the look-at-me swagger of Mick Jagger. Esparza goes big, bold and a little buggy, but he’s never boring.

While he’s at it, he joins the roster of con men from better Broadway musicals, including “The Music Man” and “110 in the Shade.” Esparza’s not a miracle worker; he can’t save the show. But he gives it his all, and that rates an amen.

@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@

The New York Post:

Celebrate ‘Leap’ here

by Elisabeth Vincentelli

*** (out of 4)

Even if you haven’t caught the movie it’s based on, you can see everything coming a mile away in “Leap of Faith.” The only surprise in this predictable, mushy new Broadway musical is how ridiculously fun it is.

The odds were bad, as the show arrived in a cloud of negative buzz: The original director was ditched in California, along with leading lady Brooke Shields. There were rumors that star Raul Esparza (“Company”) was too sinister as Jonas Nightingale, the sham faith healer played by a convivial Steve Martin in the 1992 film.

And the truth is, he kinda is.

Bamboozling the citizens of a small Kansas town at a raucous tent revival, Esparza’s Jonas, strapped in a stylish black suit, looks like Satan’s little helper.

And yet you can also see why the good people of Sweetwater would so eagerly swallow Jonas’ hooks: He’s got some bright, snazzy lures.

First, our man does appear to have a divine gift for reading his marks. That’s only because his Googling whiz sister, Sam (Kendra Kassebaum), secretly feeds him intel.

But the real reason for his success is that those traveling missionaries bring on some serious showmanship, snappily directed by Christopher Ashley and choreographed by Sergio Trujillo.

Esparza is a charismatic bandleader, and he tirelessly sells the peppy pop-gospel songs by Disney stalwart Alan Menken and Glenn Slater — the team that also brought us “Sister Act” and its freakishly similar inspirational numbers. A rousing backup choir called the Angels of Mercy helps.

Aside from stick-in-the-mud theatergoers, the only one who remains unconvinced by this high-energy roof-raising is the sheriff, Marla McGowan (Jessica Phillips).

This sexy heathen in skintight jeans also happens to be a widow with a young son, Jake (Talon Ackerman), who’s in a wheelchair. Oh, and Sweetwater is experiencing a severe drought. There is zero suspense as to what’s going to happen — Janus Cercone and Warren Leight’s book never strays from the obvious — yet the show manages to be satisfying.

Marla quickly susses out that beneath his sparkly jackets, Jonas is a troubled soul. “Someone, somewhere hurt you bad,” she sings with insight worthy of “The Mentalist.”

Marla isn’t the only obstacle Jonas and his Angels face on the way to their foretold redemption. Another is Isaiah (the fantastic Leslie Odom Jr.), the righteous son of Angels bookkeeper and star belter Ida Mae (Kecia Lewis-Evans).

Rest assured that everybody eventually comes around in one way or another. This isn’t a Disney production, but it might as well be.

If there’s a lesson in “Leap of Faith,” it’s that high-energy entertainment is the perfect sweetener: It makes everything go down, whether it’s a rascally preacher or a Broadway musical with a clunky book.

_____________








Updated On: 4/27/12 at 10:40 PM

[MamasDoin'Fine]

Posted: 4/26/12 at 10:43pm

Variety

Leap of Faith
(St. James; 1,367 seats; $137 top)

by Steven Suskin

A Michael Manheim, James D. Stern, Douglas L. Meyer, Marc Routh, Richard Frankel, Tom Viertel, Steven Baruch, Annette Niemtzow, Daryl Roth, Robert G. Bartner, Steven and Shanna Silva, Endgame Entertainment, Patricia Monaco, Debi Coleman, Dancap Prods., Steve Kaplan, Relativity Media, Rich/Caudwell, Center Theater Group, Jujamcyn presentation of a musical in two acts with music by Alan Menken, lyrics by Glenn Slater, book by Janus Cercone and Warren Leight based on the Paramount motion picture written by Cercone. Directed by Christopher Ashley; choreographed by Sergio Trujillo. Musical direction, Brent-Alan Huffman.

Ida Mae Sturdevant - Kecia Lewis-Evans
Isaiah Sturdevant - Leslie Odom Jr.
Ornella Sturdevant - Krystal Joy Brown
Jonas Nightingale - Raul Esparza
Sam Nightingale - Kendra Kassebaum
Marla McGowan - Jessica Phillips
Jake McGowan - Talon Ackerman

"Here's the beauty part," brays charismatic evangelist Jonas Nightingale in "Leap of Faith." "If they don't get their miracle, it's their fault; they didn't believe enough." That sentiment handily describes the long-in-gestation musical -- first produced at the Ahmanson in 2010 -- that a motley clutch of producers has ushered into the St. James with a new director, book-writer, choreographer and leading lady in tow. Raul Esparza sizzles like a firecracker in this musicalization of the 1992 Steve Martin pic, but his wick is continually dampened by the pesky book, songs and staging.

While the familiar story could be compelling, as assembled here it's a mass of cliches. The plot tells of Nightingale (Esparza), an itinerant con man, and the small-town Kansas folk he decides to fleece. Mix in a sadder-but-wiser local lass, Marla (Jessica Phillips, in the role played in Los Angeles by Brooke Shields), who sees through him, but allows herself to be wooed, and her young, wheelchair-bound son, Jake (Talon Ackerman), who blindly puts his trust in the visiting ne'er-do-well.

The critical second-act confrontation -- in which the boy's unwavering faith forces Nightingale to confess he's a fraud -- is a close but inferior copy of a scene in "The Music Man" (with a row of tall cornstalks upstage, too). But then, a good deal of the proceedings seem to be ineffective borrowings from a clutch of superior stage musicals.

Alan Menken's score is strong on rhythm but short on distinction, so much so that you can't always tell which songs are reprises. The lyrics by Glenn Slater, Menken's collaborator on "The Little Mermaid" and "Sister Act," are problematic: Here we have Broadway's first known rhyming of "flux" and "sucks," and Slater also has a character describe the sickly Jake with the couplet "something's wrong in his attic; psycho -- what's the word? -- somatic."

Neither director Christopher Ashley nor choreographer Sergio Trujillo (both of "Memphis") adds much to the proceedings, which are overrun by singing and dancing revivalists running through the aisles, boxes and balcony of the theater, importuning audience members to smile for the closed-circuit videocamera, wave their arms and fill donation baskets. The sets and costumes from two of musical comedy's finest designers, Robin Wagner and William Ivey Long, are uncharacteristically ordinary.

All this leaves the admirably hard-working Esparza with a show that is impossible to carry. The few bright spots in the evening are provided by the cast: Phillips, as the lady sheriff who can't resist the bad guy, holds her own, while Ackerman is likable and sympathetic as her son. Singing honors go to Kecia Lewis-Evans (as the big-voiced bookkeeper), along with Krystal Joy Brown and Leslie Odom Jr. as her grown children. But for all that, this "Leap of Faith" never lands.

Sets, Robin Wagner; costumes, William Ivey Long; lighting, Don Holder; sound, John Shivers; orchestrations, Michael Starobin and Joseph Joubert; musical supervision/vocal and incidental arrangements, Michael Kosarin; dance arrangements, Zane Mark; production stage manager, Steven Zweigbaum. Opened April 26, 2012. Reviewed April 24. Running time: 2 HOURS, 20 MIN.

With: Hettie Barnhill, Ta'Rea Campbell, Michelle Duffy, Lynorris Evans, Dierdre Friel, Bob Gaynor, Lucia Giannetta, Angela Grovey, Louis Hobson, Tiffany Janene Howard, Grasan Kingsberry, Fletcher McTaggart, Maurice Murphy, Terita Redd, Eliseo Roman, Bryce Ryness, Ann Sanders, C.E. Smith, Danny Stiles, Dennis Stowe, Betsy Struxness, Roberta Wall, Virginia Ann Woodruff.

@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@

The Hollywood Reporter:

Leap of Faith

by David Rooney

The 1992 movie no doubt has its fans, but for this reviewer, Leap of Faith was a charmless yawn whose chief distinction was the embarrassing weirdness of watching Steve Martin jogging in a crop top. Part fable about self-discovery and redemption and part takedown of shyster evangelism, the film fudged its position on whether the cynical main character had been truly enlightened by his spiritual journey, or whether such a journey had even occurred. The stage musical improves on the original simply by settling on a point of view. But despite Raul Esparza’s hard-working lead performance and some rousing Gospel numbers from Alan Menken and Glenn Slater, the story remains stubbornly unappealing.

Opening on Broadway the same week as the slavish screen-to-stage transplant of Ghost, the musical Leap of Faith earns points by at least rethinking its source for another medium, often in smart ways, too. Adapting her screenplay, Janus Cercone has collaborated with playwright Warren Leight (a Tony winner for Side Man, and showrunner on Law & Order: SVU) to clarify plot themes, redefining some characters while inventing or excising others. The resulting show has more heart than the movie, but still not enough.

Passing through the hands of three different directors probably hasn’t helped. The project was originally announced as the stage debut of Taylor Hackford, who remained attached through its development and workshops. He left prior to its 2010 premiere at the Ahmanson Theatre in Los Angeles, with choreographer Rob Ashford stepping up to take the directing reins. Ashford also subsequently departed, along with leading lady Brooke Shields and her character, making way for the Broadway team of director Christopher Ashley and choreographer Sergio Trujillo, both on autopilot.

Charismatic con men preying on small-town rubes have served as protagonists of musicals before, among them The Music Man and 110 in the Shade. But this show makes almost all of its main characters unsympathetic.

That includes unscrupulous revival preacher Jonas Nightingale (Esparza); his jaded sister Sam (Kendra Kassebaum), who runs the technical side of their flimflam operation and corresponds to the Debra Winger figure in the movie; and the brittle, widowed Sherriff Marla McGowan (Jessica Phillips), who has undergone a gender switch (she started life onscreen as Liam Neeson). As Jonas’ hesitant love interest, Marla supplants the waitress, Marva, played by Shields in L.A. and by Lolita Davidovich in the film.

Only marginally more likeable is Isaiah Sturdevant (Leslie Odom Jr.), a new character who becomes a rival to Jonas for leadership of his traveling revival troupe. His mother Ida Mae (Kecia Lewis-Evans) and sister Ornella (Krystal Joy Brown) are members of the accompanying Angels of Mercy choir. Along with Marla’s disabled 13-year-old son Jake (Talon Ackerman), these secondary figures represent the small minority of folks onstage who actually convey some warmth.

In a clumsy framing device, the action takes place in a Broadway theater during a three-night New York revival meeting. A “Nightingale’s Flock” cameraman runs around filming the audience as ensemble members urge them to wave their hands in the air. The company then shares the Kansas-based central story – Jonas’ testimony – as an example of the inspirational road to faith.

With cornfields and a revival tent sprouting up amid the risers on Robin Wagner’s unattractive set, the action moves to the dustbowl hamlet of Sweetwater, where Jonas and his troupe prepare to separate the drought-stricken, impoverished locals from their cash.

Able to spot a “Fox in the Henhouse” when she sees one, Marla provides opposition, attempting to run Jonas out of town, but not before bedding him. Another obstacle surfaces when Isaiah returns from Bible College and starts questioning the ethics of showbiz religion. But Marla’s son Jake, who has been in a wheelchair since the accident that killed his father three years earlier, truly believes Jonas can heal him. Likewise, the townspeople are ready to invest in the promise of rain.

This being a musical, lessons are learned and miracles happen. It’s not important whether those events occur due to divine faith or to the characters’ strengthened belief in themselves. What matters is that some kind of spiritual conversion has taken place.

Unfortunately, none of this is all that uplifting, but the actors give it their best shot. Chief among them is Esparza, a devilishly sexy showman who hard-sells emotional intensity like few others. That can be thrilling in the right role. But while he grows more interesting in the second act when he reveals glimmers of a soul worth saving, so much about Jonas is off-putting that he never really connects.

Marla is a bit of a drag, not to mention inconsistent, but the appealing country twang Phillips brings to her vocals helps. She and Kessebaum share a refreshingly tender moment that softens their characters in the duet, “People Like Us.”

While Isaiah’s stiff righteousness also makes him hard to warm to, Odom (Smash) releases such sweet sounds when he sings and such silky moves when he dances that even agnostics might melt. And as his mother and sister, the terrific Lewis-Evans and Brown bring powerhouse pipes and get to test them often, notably on Ida Mae’s sermon to the audience, “Lost,” and in choral crowd bait such as “Rise Up!” and “Step Into the Light.” Fans of the Gospel sound might have a fine time, even if it’s a little too synthetic to rapturously transport the audience the way the show’s creators appear to have in mind.

While Trujillo’s choreography often seems on the verge of taking flight and rarely does, his formation movement for the choir works well. The songs are more than serviceable, and Menken knows how to write melodies. In addition to Gospel, he dips into Motown, Broadway and country-pop, and the title number, which closes the show, is catchy. But none of it sounds terribly original or succeeds in covering for the shortage of emotional involvement. Ultimately, it’s hard to shake the feeling that despite all its singing to the Lord, Leap of Faith was never meant to be a musical.





Updated On: 4/26/12 at 10:43 PM

[MamasDoin'Fine]

Posted: 4/26/12 at 10:45pm

Associated Press:

Review: 'Leap of Faith' jumps around too much

by Mark Kennedy

The last musical of the official Broadway season comes into town like a huckster promising salvation. But it's the show itself that needs saving.

There's a strong musical somewhere in "Leap of Faith," which stars a soulful Raul Esparza and has some of Alan Menken's best songs.

But what opened Thursday at The St. James Theatre is sometimes confusing in its tone. Like its main character — the devious faith healer Rev. Jonas Nightingale, ready to scam residents of a down-and-out Kansas town — the musical is hard to pin down. There's too much misdirection.

The show is based on the 1992 film starring Steve Martin that was written by Janus Cercone. This time, she has teamed up with Warren Leight for a book that keeps the preacher's rhinestone jacket but plays up the romance.

"Leap of Faith" feels like many hands have tried to heal it over the years since it had its world premiere in late 2010 at the Ahmanson Theatre in Los Angeles. It's both overwritten and yet underwritten. It breaks the fourth wall repeatedly and also pretends it hasn't.

It sometimes comments on itself and then falls back into being a conventional musical. It exposes the high-tech tricks that fraudulent preachers use — and then tries to pull its own magic tricks on us. It keeps tripping itself up.

"Do you even know when you're lying anymore?" the preacher is asked at one point.

"Not so much," he answers.

All that obscures a terrific Esparza and Jessica Phillips, who plays the widowed town official skeptical of Nightingale's motives. It takes away, too, from strong songs by Menken and lyrics by Glenn Slater that include "I Can Read You," 'Long Past Dreamin'," 'Are You on the Bus?" and the thunderously good title tune.

The bones of a very good show are here if only the muscle was toned — or at least moving in one direction. Perhaps just too many layers accreted as the show passed over the years through directors Taylor Hackford to Rob Ashford to now Christopher Ashley.

The hard-sell starts as soon as the audience files into the theater, with a cameraman sweeping over the crowd and broadcasting his images on six screens. There are actors wearing red buttons that say "Rise Up" handing out fake dollar bills. At points during the performance, baskets are shoved into the crowd to retrieve the cash.

The revival meeting feeling continues with metal walkways connecting the stage and audience and even the loss of the theater's best seats to accommodate a ramp thrusting out into the crowd. Further blurring the boundaries, actors sit in the orchestra seats, waving their hands and shrieking with delight. The effect is, oddly, distancing — the opposite of the intention.

The play is mostly set in the drought-stricken town of Sweetwater, Kan., where Nightingale's traveling revival show has been stranded after their bus breaks down. Despite the threat of arrest and fines from the skeptical sheriff, Nightingale decides to put on a three-day event to pray for rain and wheedle money from the townsfolk.

Romantic sparks fly between Nightingale and the sheriff (Phillips), but she worries that her crippled son (Talon Ackerman) is being hoodwinked into believing that the preacher can help him walk again. Meanwhile, the preacher's sister (Kendra Kassebaum) warns him about losing sight of the payday.

In a secondary plotline, the traveling revival show's bookkeeper (Kecia Lewis-Evans) is visited by her son (Leslie Odom), a student at a Bible college who knows a scam when he sees one. He wants his mother and sister (Krystal Joy Brown) to walk with Jesus, not a crook.

Esparza throws himself into the role, finding the vulnerability and self-doubt in his sleazy character even as he prowls the ramps and slithers on his back to sell his lies. Phillips is a cool drink of water in her tight jeans and cowboy boots. She has a beautiful voice and the vocal skills of Lewis-Evans, Odom and Brown are also heavenly.

There are some nifty touches, including choir robes that descend on a rod for the quickest onstage costume changes in Broadway history, a killer duet between Brown and Odom, and the final thrilling scene. The connection between religion and love — leaps of faith, both — is nicely explored.

If only the show itself had enough faith to leap in one direction.

@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@

The Wall Street Journal:

Leap of Faith

by Terry Teachout

"Leap of Faith," the musical version of the 1992 film in which Steve Martin played a crooked evangelist who has a crisis of faithlessness, is as slick as ice on Teflon. To be sure, Raúl Esparza, the hardworking star, is smooth in the wrong way—he comes across like a talk-show host, not a sequin-spangled faith healer—and none of the other members of the immensely likable cast give the impression of having traveled much farther west than Chelsea. But if you're looking for pure Broadway razzmatazz, "Leap of Faith" delivers the goods. Robin Wagner's set turns the interior of the St. James Theatre into a revival tent, and Christopher Ashley and Sergio Trujillo, the director and choreographer, put every square inch of it to effective use. The chorus rocks and rolls. The gospel-style songs, by Alan Menken and Glenn Slater, are rousingly lively (though the ballads, as usual with Mr. Menken, sound like '70s sitcom themes).

What "Leap of Faith" lacks are sweat and heart, the absence of which will be bothersome only if you permit yourself to imagine how this well-oiled applause machine might have run had its creators taken the plot seriously. Real emotions, raw and hurtful, are at stake in "Leap of Faith," and on occasion they bob to the surface, as in the scene in which a frumpy, desperately unhappy woman (well played by Dierdre Friel) drops her wedding ring in the collection basket. Adam Guettel or Michael John LaChiusa would have made the whole show as gripping as that one short scene. Not so the makers of "Leap of Faith," who are, like Mr. Esparza, content to skate glamorously atop the surface of their characters' feelings. If that's good enough for you, then you won't be sorry you came.




Updated On: 4/26/12 at 10:45 PM

[MamasDoin'Fine]

Posted: 4/26/12 at 10:48pm

The Chicago Tribune:

'Leap of Faith' is a musical with a message

by Chris Jones

Raul Esparza, the handsome and admirably complex star of the new screen-to-stage musical "Leap of Faith," is the guy you want in your show when your leading character is having a crisis of faith.

Although Jonas Nightingale, the traveling huckster-preacher who takes small-town prairie innocents for the little they've got until he gets caught in one of his own traps, may seem a million miles away from Bobby in Stephen Sondheim's "Company" (Esparza's most acclaimed Broadway role to date), the two fellows actually have plenty in common. Both fall easily into Esparza's specialty — playing hard-to-read, cynical characters who draw their energy from others, and who always check to see who's in a room before entering.

"Leap of Faith," which features a score by the prolific Alan Menken, lyrics by Glenn Slater and a book by Janus Cercone and Warren Leight, is based on the 1992 movie starring Steve Martin and Meat Loaf (there's a small subset of casting combinations). Martin emphasized Jonas' flashy rhetorical theatrics when the collection plate came around. Esparza focuses more on his sense of self-loathing, which is the right way to go in the theater. There is a delicious cynicism to all Esparza does here, whether it's taking care of his partner in crime, his little sister (honestly played by Kendra Kassebaum) or wooing the wounded-but-beautiful town sheriff (Jessica Phillips) who, along with her crippled, faithful son (Talon Ackerman) will prove to be either his undoing or his salvation. Even when all is said and done, Jonas is not sure.

When "Leap of Faith" is focused on ambivalence, it feels good and true. Director Christopher Ashley has cast an ensemble of choir members and townsfolk that, thank god, look like real people under the kind of economic duress currently familiar to many Americans. Phillips could do to loosen up some; she doesn't seem interesting enough for Jonas. But many in the supporting cast, most notably the excellent "Smash" actor Leslie Odom, Jr., who plays the young preacher who blows the whistle on the Jonas scam, manage to flesh out their characters from the movie archetypes, avoiding the patronizing of faithful people and offering up both funny and moving performances.

A story that looks honestly at the fragility of our knowledge about life's great questions, and yet emphasizes how the miraculous can make that doubter doubt his doubts, is a fine topic for a musical with a decent, if not extraordinary, Menken score that embraces both Gospel stylings (animated zestily by choreographer Sergio Trujillo) and bleaker numbers more in the country tradition of personal malaise.

But this is Broadway, where backers worry about fun and popularity, and this show also has one foot in a campier reality, where roving cameras film the pre-show crowd, characters make jokes about New Yorkers, fake money is handed out to be collected later, and Jonas pokes fun at the cost of drinks in the theater: "Thank you for buying the $17 cocktails in the sippy cup. You've just been taken."

The excuse for all that nonsense is an outer narrative frame, wherein Jonas et al are telling their own story from multiple perspectives, replete with little interior monologues spoken directly to the audience. There is some fun to be had — a little — but this also scrambles the rules and bifurcates the show. There already are some tough-to-swallow aspects to the plot: the antagonist Sheriff declares her intent and power to close the swindling tent down right at the start, necessitating all kinds of leaps of faith to believe why it never quite happens until the end of Act 2. So when we take further bounds away from reality, the tent that's the centerpiece of Robin Wagner's set starts to shake. Metaphorically, anyway.

All that said, "Leap of Faith," which is believed to be on shaky fiscal footing on Broadway, is actually an interesting new American musical that, in its best moments, takes a look at a side of America that musicals usually fly right over. The title number (and several others) are quite complex Menken compositions — imagine the best of "Sister Act" suffused with a few notes and wails of the godless. And the show's main messenger delivers, with considerable flourish, the always-useful message that the more you think you know about life, the less the truth reveals itself.

@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@

amnewyork.com

Leap of Faith
by Matt Windman

**

There's a moment in "Peter Pan" where the Peter comes forward and asks the audience whether they believe in fairies.

On the other hand, there's a moment in the new musical "Leap of Faith" when a wheelchair-bound boy comes forward and asks the audience whether they believe in God. An incredibly awkward silence followed at my performance.

Based on the 1992 Steve Martin film, "Leap of Faith" feels like an unnecessary rehash of "110 in the Shade" or "The Music Man," which are also about a drifter who arrives in a small town, bears the scorn of an independent female, but eventually manages to win her over and save the day.

In this case, Jonas Nightingale (Raúl Esparza) is a fraudulent Christian faith healer who holds spectacle-driven tent revivals. He and his large choir unexpectedly visit a small town when their bus breaks down. But his ability to con people out of their money draws the wrath of the female sheriff (Jessica Phillips), whose paralyzed son thinks that Nightingale can heal him.

The musical is framed as a show-within-a-show, with the cast treating the audience as if they were attending one of Nightingale's revivalist meetings. The choir moves throughout the theater and tries to get everyone excited.

Composer Alan Menken, who now has three musicals running simultaneously, provides an adequate country-gospel score. And the story has plenty of heart. But "Leap of Faith" still comes off as derivative and painfully cheesy.

Esparza gives a characteristically intense performance, shifting from an initially easygoing and sarcastic mood to genuinely shaken up at the climax. Phillips, as the sheriff, manages to be both sexy and tender."

@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@

Entertainment Weekly:

Leap of Faith
by Thom Geier

Grade: B-

Broadway producers, apparently having exhausted all the hit films that could be adapted into stage musicals, have now taken to raiding the studio vaults for clunkers. How else to explain the arrival of Leap of Faith, a musical based on a 1992 flop starring Steve Martin as a charlatan preacher who brings his cash-sucking revival tent to a depressed, drought-ridden Kansas town? Granted, the premise seems a slightly more natural fit for the stage than recent film-based endeavors like Ghost or Spider-Man. After all, it's easier to imagine the Rev. Jonas Nightingale (Raul Esparza) and his choir bursting into song. Composer Alan Menken, a veteran of spinning stage gold from cinematic straw (Little Shop of Horrors, Newsies), has written a rousing new score with frequent lyricist Glenn Slater. Many of Menken's tunes are heaven-sent gems, particularly when Krystal Joy Brown, as the daughter of the choir leader and bookkeeper (Kecia Lewis-Evans), is belting them
out. (She's a newcomer worth watching.)

But there's a second-hand quality to the show that's hard to escape — and not because it's based on a movie. This is a tale that's as old as Elmer Gantry: A slick, cynical outsider swoops into a community of unsuspecting and gullible shills but winds up becoming a true believer himself, thanks in part to the love of a good woman who sees through his shtick but loves him anyway. Working with Warren Leight, original screenwriter Cercone has streamlined several aspects of the plot. In the film, Martin's down-on-his-luck preacher falls for a local waitress (Lolita Davidovich) with a crippled son (Lukas Haas) while his behind-the-scenes gal Friday (Debra Winger) romances the local sheriff (Liam Neeson). Here, the preacher's love interest becomes a female sheriff (Jessica Phillips, with a hint of country in her sweet singing voice) who has a wheelchair-bound son (towheaded Talon Ackerman) who yearns to walk again. You can see where all this is going, right?

Competently directed by Christopher Ashley with some lively choreography by Sergio Trujillo, the show occasionally grapples with an interesting question: Can a seriously flawed man still be a vessel for God's will, even for the miraculous? But while Esparza has a confident, commanding stage presence, he doesn't seem oily enough in his early scenes to make his second-act moment of reckoning pay off. (It doesn't help that his big 11 o'clock number, unfortunately titled 'Jonas' Soliloquy' in an apparent homage to Rodgers and Hammerstein's Carousel, is one of the show's weaker numbers.)

The show does brush on a thin veneer of documentary-style exposé — we see how a sham healer gathers telling details about his congregation to exploit during his revival service — but otherwise the story never strays from its highly conventional path. And for Broadway veterans, that path should seem especially familiar. Leap of Faith is The Music Man meets 110 in the Shade, with an overly pat ending that undercut's the plot's refreshing ambivalence about the path to salvation.
___________________________________________

[Jonwo]

Posted: 4/26/12 at 10:50pm

The reviews are just as bad if not worse than Ghost. How long before a closing notice is issued?

[MamasDoin'Fine]

Posted: 4/26/12 at 10:57pm

They are a damn sight kinder than it deserves!

[MamasDoin'Fine]

Posted: 4/27/12 at 1:14am

Regarding Ben Brantley's whining complaint that this was a "hard-run, overcrowded Spring" what would this apparently overworked critic have done in 1927?
Poor fellow, imagine having so many productions to review.
What else do they pay him for?

[MamasDoin'Fine]

Posted: 4/27/12 at 1:31am

New York Magazine:

'Leap of Faith' doesn't quite soar

by Scott Brown

On its third director and its second book, the slightly road-worn Leap of Faith vaults over a chasm of skepticism—and stops precisely three quarters of the way across. It’s not a terrible show—Elmer Gantry-meets-The Music Man is certainly a winning stage-musical conceit—but it's a persistently confused one, in tone, content, and mood. Ostensibly a straightforward inspirational dramedy (sporting a straightforward set of smoothly toothsome Alan Menken tunes, sprightly recyclings of his trademark pop yearnings and gospel pastiche), the show aims to be hiply clued-in and folksily naïve all at once. The result is a sermon in song that’s rousing enough, but also instantly evanescent: Believers and unbelievers alike are welcomed (nay, bullied) to clap along, and they’ll leave baptized in freshets of energetically manipulative pop-Broadway melody, but the effect evaporates fast. Leap feels like the not-awful, not-wonderful product of a long series
of compromises.

The show’s commitment to cross purposes begins with its book, cannily rewritten by Warren Leight (Side Man), and its star Raúl Esparza, who plays the mendicant skeevangelist Jonas Nightingale. Running a traveling tent revival with his sister Sam (a dry Kendra Kassebaum), Jonas is a devout cynic with a gift for showmanship who bleeds credulous rubes for a sawbuck here, a nickel there, in exchange for a little hope and a lot of dazzle. The show opens inside a metatheatrical frame: We’re at a “real” Nightingale revival in New York, hearing about the circumstances of the good reverend’s own sin and conversion: how he used to be a con artist posing as a man of God. But thanks to certain Damascene events he experienced in a drought-stricken Kansas town called Sweetwater—events he and his Angels of Mercy will now reenact—Jonas is now the (wink-wink) real thing. Fake cash is distributed to the audience, and baskets are passed around, on cue, to
hoover it back up. (The logistics required to distribute, then recover worthless Monopoly money is a metaphor for the whole show’s fussily self-cancelling mechanics.)

Eparza, with his hooded gaze and bratty smirk, infuses Jonas with the contemporary, ironic energy he’s known for. (Director Christopher Ashley has him constantly tippling from a hip flask, the universal shorthand for paganism.) But Esparza is transparently shifty and seems to be winking at his marks at every turn, encouraging everyone to look at his hustle as just that, a hustle. There’s not an ounce of adequately feigned sincerity in him. How’d he ever pull this con off in the first place? Do his hardworking, unpaid (and, interestingly, mostly black) Angels know he’s a fraud? (The book equivocates on this.) And do we ever get to meet any true believers who aren’t background-player caricatures and assorted rednextras? (Leslie Odom Jr. plays an authentic man of the cloth, but his role feels tacked-on and severely underdeveloped.) Jonas’s love interest is also his antagonist, the flinty, lonely local sheriff Marla (Jessica Phillips), with whom
he makes an interesting arrangement: They’ll enjoy each other sexually, and he’ll be gone in three days—provided he leaves her disabled son Jake (Talon Ackerman) out of his revival show. Jake’s eager to believe, but he’s also perfectly aware the show is fake, and there it is again: the sort of half-assed, believe-the-lie showbiz postmodernism that’s at work all across pop-culture right now. I’m not suggesting mainstream Broadway musicals are the ideal forum for discussing theosophical paradoxes, but the ambiguity here feels more like the outcome of a marketing meeting. (After all, if the show plays its cards right, Menken’s rousing gospel numbers—“Rise Up!,” “Lost,” and the title song especially—will have a long shelf life as sincere spiritual pop.) The show’s patchwork shiftiness doesn’t exactly curdle Leap’s simple-syrup story of lost faith miraculously redeemed, but it blunts the energy. A second act that’s short
on plot and long on finale-stalling, soul-searching standalone numbers doesn’t help, either. Esparza and Phillips give us something palpable to cling to with their refreshingly grown-up chemistry, and when Jonas finally faces the limits of his faithlessness, Esparza musters some eleven o-’clock Carousel pathos in a genuinely effective sung-soliloquy. Leap of Faith isn’t the walk of shame the pundits made it out to be after its (reportedly weak) Los Angeles debut. It’s just not quite enough to bring us to our feet. And, for an Alan Menken gospel musical with a flawless ensemble and a great leading man in the pulpit, that sorta buggers belief.

@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@

Bloomberg News:

Esparza Gives Sinister Edge To ‘Leap of Faith’

by Jeremy Gerard

*** (out of 4)

Broadway loves a con man, especially one who sees the light.

The flim-flam fraternity that includes Professor Harold Hill, Nathan Detroit and Bill Starbuck has a new pledge in the person of the Rev. Jonas Nightingale, the holy-rolling fleece artist currently headlining a tent meeting at the St. James Theatre under the banner “Leap of Faith.”

Played with dangerous, dark magnetism by Raul Esparza, Jonas has been banned in several states when he and his company of gospel-singing grifters tumble into the dusty town of Sweetwater, Kansas.

The choir hasn’t been paid in weeks and the bus needs a new transmission.

Sweetwater seems ripe for the picking, though the pickings will surely be slim.

The townspeople are out of work, it hasn’t rained in months and everyone has given up hope except the crippled son of the widowed lady sheriff, Marla McGowan.

“Leap of Faith,” based on the 1992 movie that starred Steve Martin and Debra Winger, has been riding that broken-down bus to Broadway for nearly a decade.

It still needs a new transmission.

The songs are by composer Alan Menken and lyricist Glenn Slater, the team that also faked gospel music with “Sister Act.”

Here we go again with oversize black singers belting their numbers to the rafters. (It’s particularly unfortunate that this character in “Leap” is named Ida Mae, while that character in “Ghost” is called Oda Mae).
Ida, Oda, let’s call the whole thing off.

Esparza works hard and the sinister edge he brings to Jonas helps cut through the blandness.

He’s ably supported by Jessica Phillips as his love interest, Kendra Kassebaum as his sister and chief accomplice, Leslie Odom Jr. as Jonas’s gently fierce nemesis and Talon Ackerman, a young charmer who plays McGowan’s determined son.

Christopher Ashley’s staging is serviceable, as are Sergio Trujillo’s dances. But there’s not a moment’s surprise in the show. Certainly not in the ending, which didn’t make a believer of me and won’t, I reckon, make one of you.

@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@

newjerseynewsroom.com:

'Leap of Faith' jumps nowhere

by Michael Sommers

So a charismatic con-artist sings and dances into a jerkwater town where he intends to make a bundle while wooing a local authority figure with a disabled younger relative ... sorry, folks, it’s not “The Music Man,” but “Leap of Faith,” a new musical that premiered Thursday at the St. James Theater.

What’s not so new and even sorrier is the musical’s familiar story based on an old Steve Martin movie about a bogus preacher and his hallelujah caravan who pitch a tent in a drought-stricken community and appeal for rain and dollars … and shades of “110 in the Shade.”

A Mephistophelian-looking Raul Esparza stars as the cynical Jonas Nightingale. Exploiting the locals, Jonas quickly seduces Marla, the county sheriff and widowed mom of Jake, a 13-year-old in a wheelchair expecting a healing miracle.

Flatly framed into a musical by original screenwriter Janus Cercone and the estimable Warren (“Side Man”) Leight, “Leap of Faith” offers a tiresome series of Bible-thumping clichés and improbable events.

For instance: After blasting Jonas in sarcastic songs like “Fox in the Henhouse” and “I Can Read Yo u,” Marla then jumps into bed with him. Nor can this sheriff somehow dissuade her disabled son Jake from attending the nightly revivals that Jonas and his gospel-shouting company are throwing … she could hide his wheelchair, maybe?

Oh, but that’s not all for plot. The miracle show’s hearty but conflicted choir leader and bookkeeper, Ida Mae, is visited by her disapproving son Isaiah, a divinity student who labors to expose Jonas’ charlatan outfit. Meanwhile, the gullible yokels sing hosannas.

Speaking of outfits, Esparza sports glittering attire, courtesy of designer William Ivey Long, while Jonas, his equally cynical baby sister and their travelling salvation show sing and shout and dance and clap and holler and testify through the endless likes of quasi-inspirational numbers like “Rise Up!,” “Step Into the Light,” “Dancin’ in the Devils Shoes” and “If Your Faith Is Strong Enough.”

Much of this music is downright handsome, since the ever-melodic Alan Menken composed it, but the gospel stuff sooner than later turns monotonous, especially since it not sincerely motivated. The nicest selections are a wistful “Long Past Dreamin’” plaint for Marla and a propulsive “Are You on the Bus?” ensemble number. The lyrics by Glenn Slater sometimes are neat (“A fox like you don’t fool a chick like me”) and sometimes are banal (“If I believe in you, can you believe in me?”).

With his hooded eyes and sleazy air, Esparza obviously appears thoroughly corrupt as Jonas, but perhaps that’s what the writers and director Christopher Ashley desire so that his inevitable redemption seems doubtful. If his dubious character is not palatable, Esparza burns with energy and sings like the blazes.

Jessica Phillips gives the supposedly prudent pushover Marla personal conviction and her songs a smoky country-western resonance. Kecia Lewis-Evans lifts up a powerfully beautiful voice as Ida Mae and a personable Leslie Odom, Jr. makes the crusading Isaiah into more of a tonic than a pill. A very hard-working ensemble injects much jubilance into their music and enthusiasm into their performances.

For all of everyone’s professional heat, however, the retreaded material never catches fire. Although Ashley’s staging is aided by designer Robin Wagner’s typically nimble setting, which thrusts over the orchestra pit and into the stage boxes, the director has trouble adjusting the script’s confusing focus as it shifts between a revival meeting in Manhattan and the principal story set in Kansas.

With so many fresh productions of enjoyable musicals both old and new like “Evita,” “Nice Work If You Can Get It” and Menken’s own lovable “Newsies” available for customers, the misbegotten “Leap of Faith” doesn’t stand a chance on Broadway.

[MamasDoin'Fine]

Posted: 4/27/12 at 1:58am

Closing expected on 5th May,

[devonian.t]

Posted: 4/27/12 at 3:13am

The tone is not vicious generally, is it?

A strong feeling that something with potential rushed rushed onto Broadway too soon.

[songanddanceman2]

Posted: 4/27/12 at 9:17am

The Times is very mean

[bob8rich]

Posted: 4/27/12 at 10:31am

Leap Of Faith, which the critics seem to hate, has just been nominated for 6 Drama Desk Awards - Best Music, Lyrics, Book, Director, Actor and Best Musical!

Alan Menken's other new musical, one of the hit shows of the current Broadway season which the critics appear to have loved, NEWSIES, managed only 5 - Best Music, Lyrics, Actor, Choreography and Best Musical.

All this just highlights that Reviews, Award nominations and popular success all come down to one thing - individual tastes and opinions - which will always differ.

[MamasDoin'Fine]

Posted: 4/27/12 at 10:33am

'The Times is very mean'
Mean, but honest.
Honest, i saw this ****e 2 weeks ago!

[AddisonMizner]

Posted: 4/27/12 at 10:56am

It's a shame this doesn't seem to be doing very well as I love a Menken score! If I was going to New York this would be on my list of things to see! However the clips don't really seem to sell the show. As others have said, the set looks really quite ugly. I also think the fact that it seems to be a "Mash-up" of two storylines from other musicals - "The Music Man" and "110 In The Shade" - has done the piece no favours either. Perhaps it is the fault of the source material that this is not succeeding?


I have only heard two full songs from the show - "Step Into The Light" and the Title Song - and I quite like them. Previews I have heard of some of the other songs in the show sound quite good as well, but I obviously haven't heard them all the way through or in context. I suppose with this getting such bad press, it will fail to get a cast recording? Or with it being Menken, is it likely to anyway?