Raul Esparza in Leap of Faith
The Broadway season ended yesterday with Leap of Faith. This adaptation of the 1992 film
The cast includes Raúl Esparza (Jonas), Talon Ackerman (Jake), Krystal Joy Brown (Ornella), Kendra Kassebaum (Sam), Kecia Lewis-Evans (Ida Mae), Leslie Odom Jr. (Isaiah), and Jessica Phillips (Marla).
Ben Brantley (New York Times): Leap of Faith is this season’s black hole of musical comedy, sucking the energy out of anyone who gets near it. … Faith recycles its clichés without a shred of true conviction. Its jokes, its romantic scenes, its dance numbers, its interchangeable songs by Mr. Menken … all feel as if they had been pasted into place the night before. … [Esparza] at last comes into his own in the show’s penultimate number … 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.
David Cole (Time Out): 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. … [It] never finds the right proportion of comic cynicism to wide-eyed spiritual wonder, foundering in a series of interchangeable song-and-dance numbers, tin-eared, mawkish dialogue and a generic gospel-country score that quickly evaporates from memory.
David Rooney (Hollywood Reporter): 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. … None of this is all that uplifting, but the actors give it their best shot. … 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.
Terry Teachout (Wall Street Journal): 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. … But if you’re looking for pure Broadway razzmatazz, Leap of Faith delivers the goods. … 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. … Not so the makers of Leap of Faith, who are, like Mr. Esparza, content to skate glamorously atop the surface of their characters’ feelings.
Linda Winer (Newsday): Esparza almost seems too smart – or perhaps just too grown-up – for the show. If so, this is hardly his fault. Despite the credentials of the creative team, the country/pop/gospel songs by Alan Menken and Glenn Slater (Sister Act