Leap of Faith
Opening Night: April 26, 2012
Closing: May 13, 2012
Theater: St. James Theatre
Four-time Tony® Award nominee Raúl Esparza (Cabaret, Company) stars as Jonas Nightingale, an electrifying performer and rabble-rouser who’s planning to take the whole town for a ride. But when a small-town girl stops him in his tracks, this hustler may just discover something to believe in.
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April 26, 2012
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.
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April 26, 2012
Want to make a ton of money? Peddle God to fools. Want to lose a ton of money? Invest in a Broadway turkey. You can’t have it both ways. It’s perfectly fine—even desirable—if your religion is crude and nonsensical, but a show as bland and confused as Leap of Faith is not going to make rich men of its producers (among whom are actual church leaders). The fake cash distributed by actors to audience members—so we may place it in the offertory baskets at Jonas Nightingale’s revivalist hoedowns—is all the green this wanly tacky production is likely to see.
READ THE REVIEWApril 26, 2012
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.
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April 26, 2012
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.
READ THE REVIEWApril 26, 2012
Sociocultural theses may be written about the season when Broadway got dead serious about Christianity. Not only do we have earnest, grandiose revivals of "Godspell" and "Jesus Christ Superstar," but here comes a true-believing musical, "Leap of Faith," flat-lined out of the charming and touching 1992 Steve Martin movie about a con man preacher.
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