Paradise Square Opens on Broadway

I had the good fortune to be invited to one of the first previews of the new Broadway musical Paradise Square which opens at the Barrymore Theatre April third.

Naturally, I have a funny personal story about this. 

Many years ago, I read a brilliant novel called Paradise Alley. It is a historical fiction about three women — Black and Irish, at the outset of the Civil War draft riots. They survived those harrowing days as the city erupted over the unfairness of the U.S. government drafting Irish immigrants to go fight in a war about which they knew nothing. 

People being how they are, they were only too happy to blame the freed Blacks for this inconvenience to which the Blacks could rightly respond, “Dude…I was literally a slave right before this.”

I should have maybe been a history teacher. 

I was so blown away by Kevin Baker’s novel that I wrote him an email — something I have never done before or since — just saying thanks for this amazing read. He wrote back right away! A couple years later I ended up adapting one of his other novels into a screenplay, and we ended up all the way at Hollywood’s doorstep. The script never got made into a film, though I still believe it may yet.

Courtesy: Scott Brooks

Now, here is the summary of the musical Paradise Square:

Within this galvanizing story of racial harmony undone by a country at war with itself, we meet the denizens of a saloon called Paradise Square. These characters include… a Black woman… her Irish catholic sister in-law and her Black minister husband… an Irish immigrant and a corrupt political boss.

I texted my novelist friend with the sentiment of the Reynolds Pamphlet number from Hamilton… Have you read this shit!? He had. I am in no way implying any sort of malfeasance, rather astonished at how close these writers and producers came to making a musical out of the novel with almost the same name without even realizing it… and how much better it would have been for all involved if they had.

The one thing that the creators of the musical clearly strained to do was to have compelling plot among all the toil and suffering. All the ingredients are there, but it’s not as easy as it looks. The show had no less than three playwrights and two lyricists and swings for the fences at every turn at times invoking Les Miserables, Ragtime and the multi-cultural nonstop energy of Hamilton. The end result felt like many wonderful pieces, but I kept waiting for that whole.

The talented cast is working their arses off. The dancing is one of the biggest parts of the show — almost to the point of distraction I would say, as brilliant as it is. A large part of the plot revolves around a dance contest, if that gives you any idea how much dancing we are talking about here.

Courtesy: Kevin Berne / Publicist Paradise Square

Let’s talk about that dance contest for a minute. 

See, the thing about the draft riots was this: if you could come up with $300 you could buy your way out of going to war. That was a year’s salary to these guys as one character points out. This was so unfair, that everyone without $300 got together and burned New York City to the ground.

The lead character Nelly O’Brien (Joaquina Kalukango) who owns the saloon at the center of all this action is also being exhorted by a villainous Upper East Sider (we all know that guy.) The reason? Some trumped tax charges. Long story short, she has to raise a ton of money to pay off the huge tax debt — a working man’s annual wages.

Nelly says if she has a dance contest, with all the people coming to watch, she can easily raise that much money in one night! In one night!?

And I thought, Well, why doesn’t she have dancing every weekend then? Or even once a month?

She could be rich!

Courtesy: Kevin Berne / Publicist, Paradise Square

Joaquina Kalukango who plays the erstwhile saloon keeper carries the show on her tireless shoulders right up to her show stopping eleven o’clock number Let it Burn which she sings as they burn down her neighborhood around her and her friends. The number brought the audience to its feet and the curtain call did the same. The audience wanted very much to like this show and so did I.

I predict that you won’t find any unkind reviews for Paradise Alley, I mean Paradise Square, but you won’t find any glowing ones either.

Paradise Square opens April third at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre.

Courtesy: Scott Brooks