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"All Good Gifts" certainly do surround Telly Leung, who seems to thank the Lord every day that the Daniel Goldstein production of Godspell finally landed on Broadway. Leung began preaching the parables back in 2006 when the Goldstein-directed production was seen in a limited engagement at New Jersey's Paper Mill Playhouse. When Leung and the Godspell company were to make the leap of faith to Broadway in the fall of 2008, America's economic crisis put all dreams on hold. Now, after a five-year wait — during which he closed the Broadway production of Rent and dropped by Dalton Academy for a stint on "Glee" — he feels blessed to reunite with Jesus and the gang at the Circle in the Square.

Leung is not only connected to Academy Award-winning composer-lyricist Stephen Schwartz after originating the role of Boq in Chicago, and singing "All Good Gifts" night after night in the revival of Godspell — the two also happen to be graduates of Carnegie Mellon University. Schwartz, who teamed up with John-Michael Tebelak in 1970 to create the cult classic musical as a CMU master's thesis project, happened to return to Carnegie Mellon and offer a performance master class at the same time Leung was an undergrad. Read more about it.

	Leung in Godspell.
	photo by Jeremy Daniel

My relationship with Schwartz has actually been a long one. I met Stephen back in college. I went to Carnegie Mellon, which is where Godspell kind of all started. Stephen also went there, and he would come back every year and do master classes with the senior students, so that was my first time meeting Stephen. Ever since then I've done a ton of his shows and he's always been a great supporter, a mentor and a cheerleader for me. Anyway, we did this great production [of Godspell in 2006]. Paper Mill Playhouse is such a short rehearsal period, but we still created that show from scratch in very much the same spirit that they did back in 1971. You had the songs in a particular order, you had the parables in a particular order, but what you did with the parables and how you did the story-telling was very much up in the air and created by the originality and ingenuity of the group you assemble. Paper Mill was a joyful month of rehearsal and a joyful month-long run. In 2008, they started talking about a Broadway revival, and that they were going to revive Danny's version. We were all stunned. This two-month gig that we just thought was going to be two months of pure joy — that I made long, fast friends with — all of a sudden was now going to be a Broadway show. Well, with the 2008 revival that was supposed to be at the Barrymore Theatre, six days before we were supposed to start rehearsals, we were told that the show had been indefinitely postponed and cancelled... I know people turned down jobs for it. Everybody had counted on that job happening, and then six days before, they pulled the plug. It kind of went from being the highest of highs to the lowest of lows. Then, the story ended happily in 2011 with this revival in the perfect theatre, in the perfect space, with the perfect situation... It's kind of really interesting to look back on it and go, "That was the plan. Everything was supposed to happen for a reason." As wonderful as it felt in 2006 and as terrible as it felt in 2008, it all was supposed to end happily — here — in 2011. It was a long journey, but I'm glad that the journey had a happy ending.