[4] Leap of Faith, with Rob Ashford as director and choreographer, made its world premiere at the Ahmanson Theatre in Los Angeles, starring Esparza and Brooke Shields.

[12] Note: Based on the Broadway production[11] A con artist, the "Reverend" Jonas Nightingale, travels with his ministry, but his bus breaks down in a small Kansas town.

The Backstage reviewer wrote: "Though the overlong show improves marginally during the home stretch, its story and themes never fully cohere, and the derivative, gospel-driven Alan Menken-Glenn Slater score is disappointing.

By inserting superfluous Agnes de Mille-style ballet segments, as if this were a modern-day Rodgers-and-Hammerstein opus, and pumping up the volume and the histrionics, it's clear Menken, director-choreographer Rob Ashford, and co-librettists Slater and Janus Cercone envisioned this adaptation as more of an artsy prestige musical than a sentimental bromide for The Sound of Music crowd ... Esparza has a dynamic singing voice and is a formidable presence, but his Mephistophelean con man seems a shade too smarmy for us to buy into his eventual redemption.

"[14] Charles McNulty, in his review for the Los Angeles Times, wrote: "much of the score is derivative, the dancing often seems like ballet school parody, Shields' singing defensively retreats to the safest possible key and the closing moments are pure sentimental hokum.

"[20] Brown also described the show as "persistently confused ... in tone, content, and mood", and that "Leap feels like the not-awful, not-wonderful product of a long series of compromises";[20] Elysa Gardner of USA Today (in a 2 1/2-star out of 4 review) called it "an odd, uneasy mix of souped-up razzle-dazzle and earnest romantic drama";[21] and David Cote of Time Out New York (in a 2 out of 5-star review) called the show "bland and confused", "never [finding] the right proportion of comic cynicism to wide-eyed spiritual wonder".

[22] Terry Teachout of The Wall Street Journal called the show "as slick as ice on Teflon", lacking in "sweat and heart" - but that "if you're looking for pure Broadway razzmatazz, Leap of Faith delivers the goods".

"[24] David Finkle of TheaterMania described Esparza's performance as "his finest ... to date", and praised the show for having three of that Broadway seasons' best musical numbers (in "I Can Read You", "Dancin' in the Devil's Shoes" and "Are You On the Bus?").