LEAP OF FAITH Previews — Page 7

Saw the show last night. Mixed feelings that I will express later. However........


SPOILER ALERT!!





(pause)



FIrst of all, I have never seen the film, so I only know the story from the press materials, BWW and deduction. Either I have a vivid imagination or a lapse of lucidity, but it's fairly clear to me how the 'miracle' happens, which is the catalyst for Jonas' big epiphany (and 11 o'clock number.)

Marva's son blames himself for the accident and is punishing himself for causing the death of his father (the baseball under the brakes). He most likely has been able to walk for awhile, but is punishing himself. (It doesn't help that a faith healer laid a huge guilt trip on the kid.) Nightingale comes in as the father figure, the boy confesses for the first time to anyone that he feels responsible, and thus easing his burden. I personally don't believe the plot devise that has Boyd thinking his mother has lost faith in him, and it's only when she appears to encourage him at this pivotal moment that he is 'cured.' Don't know what happened in the movie, but the way they set up Jonas (with the near painful "I Can Read You"), surely he would have figured out what really happened, thus clearing up some of the conflicting emotions during his big Soliloquy. ( Of course there might not be a need for one if he had!)

Not that I am against miracles, but this stuck out in my mind as confusing. Maybe Jonas is really all bravado and no brains and would not of figured that all out. At least not in the short term.

Discuss.

I think your assessment of the miracle is fairly accurate. I saw the movie but so long ago I don’t remember the details. Mostly what I remember is I hated, absolutely LOATHED the ending. If it had been a book I would have thrown it across the room.

Yes, Jonas should have seen it, but I think it’s a measure of how “thrown off his game” he is by Marva and his attraction to her that he didn’t. And I also think that there’s more going on in Jonas’ life that we’re not really shown. I think he’s reached, without consciously realizing it, a crisis of faith within himself. Possibly it’s been brewing for some time and he’s absolutely refused to even acknowledge it, let alone confront it.

Then he gets stranded in Sweetwater and everything that happens comes at him so quickly, and from all sides, that the walls he’s constructed to protect himself get hammered at until they shatter in the “miracle” scene and he’s so totally unsure of anything and everything that he can’t even accept what he knows to be true. He even says it right there in the Soliloquy – that maybe it was all in the kid’s head, psychosomatic. He’s trying to make some sense of what the hell just happened, but he can’t because what used to make sense doesn’t because he isn’t the same person any longer. As he sings in the final scene – “don’t know where I’m going, or even who to be”, he knows he’s not the same person any longer, and he's as unsteady in it as a newborn.

I think that’s the real “miracle” in Leap, that Jonas has been utterly and truly transformed by the events in the story. More than anyone else on that stage, in that town.

Also, I don't think that Marva giving the boy encouragement is what "cures" him. I think you had it right in the first place - it comes from within himself, by way of Jonas who was the first person who, knowing all the facts, still told him it wasn't his fault. I think it was a combination of the timing (he was ready) and being given permission, as it were, that triggered the "miracle".

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Updated On: 9/23/10 at 06:00 PM

singingbackup -- I agree with your assessment of the miracle being the catalyst for Jonas' moment of epiphany, but I'm not sure I agree about Boyd being able to walk, and simply not walking out of self-inflicted punishment. Or, more specifically, I don't know that I believe he is lying deliberately; maybe it's some sort of psychosomatic thing, and he can't walk until he truly believes he's ready and deserves to. That I could get behind, I think. Of course, that's only based on the reading about nine months ago, so I fully grant that it may be more clearly implied to that end now and I just don't know it. To me, though, the crux of the argument the show is posing wasn't on whether Boyd was telling the truth or not, or guilt and self-punishment, but rather the imposition of different kinds of faith, and how they effect people, and further, the way we live our lives.

When I saw it, there was a really powerful moment when the full story about Boyd and his father got revealed, and about the faith healer, Boyd's relationship to faith, etc. You could sense something really serious click within Jonas' consciousness at the moment. For me, what was important there wasn't that Boyd was punishing himself and diminishing his own physical abilities, but that he had been so destroyed by what people had told him, and miracles not coming true. (And it could be that he can walk. Maybe he can. I just didn't feel like the show "tells" you that.) Now I'm curious to know if they're trying harder to swing it the other way! I don't know that I think that works as well. It doesn't seem to link in with the big themes of the show quite as well. Of course, my interpretation leaves open ended the question of how, exactly, he comes to walk in the end; I guess what I like about that notion, though, is that it does leave you wondering in what I think is a very satisfying way: do we believe in miracles? Do we believe in choices people make to formulate their own? What actually happened, as opposed to what we think happened? That puts us in the same boat as the characters; they don't know how it happened, but it did and they saw it. I think that's what creates the satisfaction.

As far as I Can Read You, I think that's a plot device simply as far as the romantic storyline goes. He's putting all of this out there that's totally fake, about how he can read people, etc. But he can't really, he doesn't really know all of these things. When he guesses them in the diner, he's probably just getting lucky, but of course as far as all of the things during the tent revivals go, he's being fed all of the information from his sister. And he knows this. So I think he's basically using that whole "people reading" thing as a way to make a move on Marva; he can figure her out because he knows women, whatever. He can read people in the most basic sense, which he may be very good at, but he's got no special abilities. Or, to be clearer, I think that's all it is in HIS mind. And if he is, then a fake, he wouldn't really have known that Boyd was faking, if he was. He wouldn't have figured out what really happened, because he doesn't really have any of those abilities he claims to. That might be a hole, where she should wonder why he didn't get more about the kid, but I don't necessarily think he should have picked it up, since he can't.

Does that all make sense? I am operating on a fried brain, heh.

I don't really like the movie. I feel like there's a lot missing that they filled in very well in the musical. The end feels abrupt and inconclusive, but not in one of those, "Wow, that's how life really is," kind of ways, and I think it was a good choice to sacrifice the secondary romantic plot line for more digging at the depths of the themes.

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Updated On: 9/24/10 at 08:43 PM

OMG - they are changing the one song that I thought was just about perfect as it was, and took away a Jonas verse?? Bad news for me. But very glad to hear that they are tightening up the show.

Emcee - I agree completely. It's not like Raul doesn't have a lot to do already! It's just I was fond of his delivery of that verse, even though those lyrics were terrible cliches.

I think I wasn’t very clear there. What I liked before was the fact that the shock of the reveal was equal on both sides. She is shocked to discover who/what he is, and he is totally thrown by her reaction. Yet another element to “throw him off his game” (which I feel is utterly crucial to the story, per my comments ^^^). The way it is now, he knows how she’s going to react when she finds out what he is. I’m not saying it doesn’t work, because it does. Its just that in comparison to the way it was before this seems a little...lopsided, I guess. Although it does get a laugh, which is not a bad thing.

The reblocking/rechoreographing of I Can Read You is SUCH a relief. It’s a lot cleaner now, but they also took out this weird little sort of hop up/spin that Raul does, where he hops from the floor to sitting on the countertop by vaulting over the stools and does a full 360 in the process. I held my breath every time he did it, because I was waiting for the time when he’d miss the vault and whack his head into the counter’s edge. This is better and there’s still plenty of physicality in the scene.

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Emcee, he delivered that a few times in NY, no?

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More changes tonight. They moved "Let It Loose" to immediately after the first revival scene. It flows SO MUCH BETTER this way. Lots more little changes, tweaks and reblocking and things like that. Some of them work so well you sit there and wonder "why didn't they do it that way in the first place??"

Make sure to check out the video of Last Chance Salvation that's around here somewhere. Tonight I had that about three feet from my nose. It was awesome.

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I forgot to say (that's what I get for posting at 1AM) that they have steadily been fleshing out Marva, adding bits of dialog and action that really make you see why Jonas falls so hard for her. She's becoming a much more rounded, more fully realized character than she was originally supposed to be, I think.

I have to hand it to Brooke - she is growing tremendously in the role. I have the utmost respect for the her courage and bravery in taking this on, and I think she's exceeded a lot of people's expectations in the way she's met the challenge. I wish more people could see the progress she's made.

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A good friend saw the show the other night and really liked it. I hope that it comes to New York so I'll have the chance to see it.

humbugfoto... just curious... how do you have the opportunity to see LEAP OF FAITH every performance?

Wow. This show's look is extraordinarily conventional. Yeah, it's The Music Man-meets-The Rainmaker-meets-Elmer Gantry so why not at least give it innovative sets that don't look like they're from a cheap stock production of, well, The Music Man-meets-The Rainmaker-meets-Elmer Gantry? This is supposed to be set in the present, is it not?

Which brings me to the choreography and the chorus dancers in that "Montage!" clip. Again, this is the 21st century, right? Why do they look like the happy townfolk of Brigadoon? Does every musical need extended dance numbers? And c'mon... ballet? Really? I'd rather see interesting types peopling a town, varied in age and size, than a chorus of 99% white, pretty, buff and sexy, ballet-dancing clones. Even the cops or troopers at 00:39 look like 25-year-old Abercrombie models. Not believable. Musicals desperately need a certain amount of believable.

I know, I know, the response is coming: "But there is one old guy and an African American couple among the townfolk, so you can't say it's not diverse!" This is the stuff that makes most contemporary musicals unintentionally laughable. Musicals already stretch credibility, why not give us some background characters we can connect with, and who can give the town some tiny sense of a real life?

I don't remember seeing a ballet, or much choreography to speak of at all, in "The Light in the Piazza". (Okay, the "American Dancing" number, but that was a smart and appropriate piece of character development, and a single dancer, not the entire city of Florence exploding in dance.) The story didn't need it, so it was not put in. And in spite of the period costumes and an ancient locale, "...Piazza" looked and felt fresh and contemporary. It's called musical staging, Mr. Ashford, and you don't need the cast of "Broadway Bares" to pull it off.

(Nothing against "Broadway Bares") :)

Not arguing with you on the time continuity, but it seems like they're actually going for the early 90's. They don't say what year it is, and a lot of the costumes look pretty contemporary (which speaks to the problem you're raising), but there are some visual references that point to it not being in the 21st century. There are a couple of posts earlier on about Sam's computer, for example. I think they need to make a decision and commit the whole production to serving it, not be vague and let it sort of float between the two.

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I've been a theater lover my entire life, but watching a show grow from its inception is something we never get to see in Los Angeles - virtually everything we see here is the National Tour of a finished product.

What about Curtains? 9 to 5? Both new musicals had their out of town tryouts in LA, and that's just the first that came to mind. Three shows in the past five years is not "never". I don't care about your excuses for why someone who claims to be so interested in this process never once mentioned those shows, let alone saw them nightly, but your above comment is inconsiderate to the entire country, save New York. Just because you weren't seeing it until now doesn't change the fact that Los Angeles gets a lot more original theatre than the non-equity bus and truck companies the majority of the country has to make due with.

ETA: They had the Edward Scissorhands musical as well- even Broadway didn't get that.

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Updated On: 9/26/10 at 09:10 PM