VIDEO: NYC Mayor Eric Adams Gives Pre-Show Speech at PARADISE SQUARE

Paradise Square opened on Broadway at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre last night, Sunday, April 3rd. Prior to the curtain rising, New York City Mayor Eric Adams made opening remarks onstage. Check out the video!

The show, which initially started previews on March 15th, is lead by Tony Award nominee Joaquina Kalukango (Slave Play), alongside Chilina Kennedy (Beautiful: The Carole King Musical), Tony Award nominee John Dossett (Newsies, Gypsy), Sidney Dupont (Beautiful: The Carole King Musical), A.J. Shively (La Cage aux Folles, Bright Star), Nathaniel Stampley (The Gershwin's Porgy & Bess, The Color Purple), Gabrielle McClinton (Pippin, Chicago), Jacob Fishel (Fiddler on the Roof), Kevin Dennis (Canadian productions of Young Frankenstein, Assassins), and Matt Bogart (Smokey Joe's Café, Miss Saigon). Aisha Jackson (Frozen, Waitress, Beautiful: The Carole King Musical) will stand by for Ms. Kalukango.

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.