Three-time Tony Award winning producer Garth H. Drabinsky is pleased to announce the opening night for the new musical Paradise Square, the first pre-Broadway premiere in the country following the industry-wide shut down due to the global pandemic. Paradise Square opens Wednesday, November 17 at Chicago’s James M. Nederlander Theatre (24 W. Randolph). The production plays a limited engagement through December 5, 2021.
After its Chicago run, Paradise Square begins previews February 22, 2022 at Broadway’s Barrymore Theatre (243 West 47th Street), where it opens March 20, 2022.
Tony Award nominee Joaquina Kalukango (Slave Play, One Night in Miami) leads the cast Ms. Kalukango is a 2020 Tony Award nominee for Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Play for her role as Kaneisha in Slave Play. She has also starred on Broadway in The Color Purple, Holler If Ya Hear Me and Godspell. Her film and television credits include the role of Betty X in Amazon’s One Night in Miami (SAG Award nomination, Cast in a Motion Picture), HBO’s “Lovecraft Country” and the Netflix series, “When They See Us.”
Paradise Square also stars Chilina Kennedy (over 1200 performances in Beautiful: The Carole King Musical on Broadway; International tour of The Band’s Visit), Tony Award nominee John Dossett (Broadway’s Pippin, Newsies, Gypsy, Ragtime), Sidney DuPont (Broadway’s Beautiful: The Carole King Musical; National tours of Memphis, A Chorus Line), A.J. Shively (Broadway’s La Cage aux Folles, Bright Star), Nathaniel Stampley (Broadway’s The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess, The Color Purple), Gabrielle McClinton (Broadway’s Pippin, Chicago), Kevin Dennis (Canadian productions of Young Frankenstein, Assassins), Jacob Fishel (Broadway’s Fiddler on the Roof) and Matt Bogart (Broadway’s Smokey Joe’s Café, Jersey Boys).
The distinguished creative team for Paradise Square features direction by two-time Tony Award nominee and National Medal of Arts winner Moisés Kaufman (I Am My Own Wife, The Laramie Project), choreography by two-time Tony Award winner Bill T. Jones (Spring Awakening, Fela!), and a book by Christina Anderson (Good Goods, Inked Baby), Marcus Gardley (The House That Will Not Stand), Craig Lucas (The Light in the Piazza) and Larry Kirwan (lead singer of Black 47). Musical staging is by Alex Sanchez (Far From Heaven, City Center Encores!).
The score of Paradise Square is written by the team of composer Jason Howland (Beautiful: The Carole King Musical, Little Women - The Musical) and lyricists Nathan Tysen (Amélie, Tuck Everlasting) and Masi Asare (Monsoon Wedding, The Family Resemblance), with additional material by Mr. Kirwan. The musical features original songs as well as material inspired by the songs of Stephen Foster. Musical direction, arrangements and orchestrations are by Howland.
Paradise Square is produced by Garth H. Drabinsky (Kiss of the Spider Woman (Tony Award, Best Musical), Show Boat (Tony Award, Best Revival of a Musical), Ragtime, Fosse (Tony Award, Best Musical), Parade). Mr. Drabinsky’s longtime colleague, documentary filmmaker Peter LeDonne (the Academy Award-nominated Curtain Call and Sister Rose’s Passion) is co-producing.
The production also features Garrett Coleman, Jason Oremus, Colin Barkell, Karen Burthwright, Kennedy Caughell, Dwayne Clark, Eric Craig, Colin Cunliffe, Chloe Davis, Josh Davis, Bernard Dotson, Jamal Christopher Douglas, Camille Eanga-Selenge, Sam Edgerly, Shiloh Goodin, Jacobi Hall, Sean Jenness, Joshua Keith, Jay McKenzie, Ben Michael, Kayla Pecchioni, Eilis Quinn, Lee Siegel, Erica Spyres, Lael van Keuren, Alan Wiggins, Kristen Beth Williams and Hailee Kaleem Wright.
The multi-award-winning creative team features scenic design by Allen Moyer, costume design by Toni-Leslie James, lighting design by Donald Holder, sound design by Jon Weston. Dramaturgy is by Thulani Davis and Sydné Mahone, Projection design is by Wendall K. Harrington.
ABOUT THE MUSICAL
New York City. 1863. The Civil War raged on. An extraordinary thing occurred amid the dangerous streets and crumbling tenement houses of the Five Points, the notorious 19th-century Lower Manhattan slum. For many years, Irish immigrants escaping the devastation of the Great Famine settled alongside free-born Black Americans and those who escaped slavery, arriving by means of the Underground Railroad. The Irish, relegated at that time to the lowest rung of America’s social status, received a sympathetic welcome from their Black neighbors (who enjoyed only slightly better treatment in the burgeoning industrial-era city). The two communities co-existed, intermarried, raised families, and shared their cultures in this unlikeliest of neighborhoods.
The amalgamation between the communities took its most exuberant form with raucous dance contests on the floors of the neighborhood bars and dance halls. It is here in the Five Points where tap dancing was born, as Irish step dancing joyously competed with Black American Juba.
But this racial equilibrium would come to a sharp and brutal end when President Lincoln’s need to institute the first Federal Draft to support the Union Army would incite the deadly NY Draft Riots of July 1863.
Within this galvanizing story of racial harmony undone by a country at war with itself, we meet the denizens of a local saloon called Paradise Square: Nelly O’Brien (Joaquina Kalukango), the indomitable Black woman who owns it; Annie Lewis (Chilina Kennedy), her Irish-Catholic sister-in-law and her Black minister husband, Rev. Samuel Jacob Lewis (Nathaniel Stampley); Willie O’Brien (Matt Bogart), Nelly’s Irish husband, who is off fighting for the Union army; Owen Duignan (A.J. Shively), a conflicted newly arrived Irish immigrant; Washington Henry (Sidney DuPont), a fearless freedom seeker; Frederic Tiggens (John Dossett), an anti-abolitionist political boss, and Milton Moore (Jacob Fishel), a penniless songwriter trying to capture it all. They have conflicting notions of what it means to be an American while living through one of the most tumultuous eras in our country’s history.
The world premiere of Paradise Square was produced in January 2019 by Berkeley Repertory Theatre (Artistic Director, Tony Taccone; Managing Director, Susan Medak). The musical was originally conceived by Mr. Kirwan.
With visceral and nuanced staging and choreography that captures the pulsating energy when Black and Irish cultures meet, Paradise Square depicts an overlooked true-life moment when hope and possibility shone bright.
TICKET INFORMATION:
Individual tickets for Paradise Square are on sale for performances through December 5, 2021. Tickets are available for groups of 10 or more by calling Broadway In Chicago Group Sales at (312) 977-1710. For more information or tickets, visit www.BroadwayInChicago.com
ABOUT BROADWAY IN CHICAGO
Broadway In Chicago was created in July 2000 and over the past 21 years has grown to be one of the largest commercial touring homes in the country. A Nederlander Presentation, Broadway In Chicago lights up the Chicago Theater District entertaining more than 1.7 million people annually in five theatres. Broadway In Chicago presents a full range of entertainment, including musicals and plays, on the stages of five of the finest theatres in Chicago’s Loop including the Cadillac Palace Theatre, CIBC Theatre, James M. Nederlander Theatre, and just off the Magnificent Mile, the Broadway Playhouse at Water Tower Place and presenting Broadway shows at the Auditorium Theatre.
Paradise Square run: November 17-December 5, 2021