“Paradise Square,” a dance-filled Broadway musical about race relations in Civil War New York City, will close Sunday after weeks of trying to overcome continued soft sales.
The musical, which began previews on March 15 and opened on April 3, was a failed comeback attempt by legendary producer Garth H. Drabinsky, who was convicted of fraud in Canada and time after winning three Tony Awards in the 1990s. was sitting. set in lower Manhattan in 1863, is about a low-income neighborhood where African Americans and Irish immigrants formed a community disrupted by the Civil War conscription riots. The musical is big, with a large cast and many production numbers, and has received praise for the central performance, by Joaquina Kalukango, as well as for the choreography, by Bill T. Jones and others.
It was nominated for 10 Tony Awards, but won only one, for Kalukango. Her smashing performance at the Tony Awards of the show’s 11 p.m. song, “Let It Burn,” was well-received, but the evening didn’t translate into enough ticket sales to keep the show alive.
“We wanted to give ‘Paradise Square’ every opportunity, but several challenges proved insurmountable,” Drabinsky said when announcing the closure.
The show has a long and complicated history. Starting ten years ago as “Hard Times”, by Larry Kirwan of the band Black 47, its early productions, at New York’s Cell, drew heavily on the music and life story of Stephen Foster, the 19th-century songwriter.
In the years since, with Drabinsky at the helm, it has repeatedly changed book writers and expanded other parts of its creative team; it also moved further and further away from Foster’s music and biography. Before Broadway, there was a nonprofit production at the Berkeley Repertory Theater in California, and a commercial in Chicago; neither was particularly well received, but production continued, confident word of mouth would be strong.
The Broadway production failed to break through during a competitive season, with tourism still low due to the coronavirus pandemic and a slew of new shows all demanding attention. “Paradise Square”, with an unknown title, an unfamous cast and mediocre reviews, failed to gain a foothold; it has consistently sold far less than other Broadway musicals and far less than it took to sell to pay its weekly running costs; during the week ending June 5, it brought in a paltry $229,337 and played for houses that were only 59 percent full.
The musical was capitalized for up to $15 million, according to a recently updated filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. That money is lost.