Up on the Marquee: PARADISE SQUARE

Paradise Square is getting ready to start previews on Tuesday, March 15, 2022 and open Sunday, April 3, 2022 at the Barrymore Theatre (243 West 47th Street), where the marquee just went up. Check out photos below!

Paradise Square stars Joaquina Kalukango (Tony Award nominee for Slave Play, Netflix's "One Night in Miami"), Chilina Kennedy (over 1,200 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 ofMemphis, A Chorus Line), A.J Shively (Broadway's La Cage aux Folles, Bright Star), Matt Bogart (Broadway's Smokey Joe's Café, Jersey Boys), Nathaniel Stampley (Broadway's The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess, The Color Purple), Gabrielle McClinton (Broadway's Pippin, Chicago), Jacob Fishel (Broadway's Fiddler on the Roof) and Kevin Dennis (Canadian productions of Young Frankenstein, Assassins).

The score 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 Larry Kirwan (Lead singer of Black 47). The musical features original songs as well as new material inspired in part by the songs of Stephen Foster.

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.

Photo Credit: Jennifer Broski