July 10, 2022
When talk turns to Olde New York City watering holes, legendary bars like Fraunces Tavern, McSorley’s, and the White Horse always come up. All of them, despite being quite ancient, are still open for business. Sadly, the same can’t be said for Paradise Square, a mid-Nineteenth Century saloon that may have stood near present day landmarks such as Wo Hop‘s and Police Plaza in the area formerly known as the Five Points. Like so much of this island, that neighborhood has been done and re-done over countless times since Abe Lincoln was President, and today there’s not a trace of Paradise Square to be found.
But if you’re curious about what it might have been like inside of the Paradise Square saloon in its day, you’re in luck. A Broadway musical of the same name is now playing at the Barrymore Theater on West 47th Street. The Gazette popped in for a performance recently and came away impressed. The show has everything to love and nothing not to. It’s a vanishingly rare original work in an age of revivals and countless cookie cutter bios of seemingly every act that’s ever had a top ten hit on the radio. Everyone from Gloria Estefan and Carole King to the Temptations, Donna Summer, and currently, Michael Jackson has been given ‘the treatment.’ And that’s fine, in a sense. We loved Jersey Boys and Beautiful, for example. And if you loved the band you’ll probably like the musical. But after awhile the formula approach strikes us as borderline lazy on top of frankly unoriginal. And at a hundred bucks or more a seat, a Broadway show should meet/exceed a standard that reflects those ticket prices and not simply the production’s considerable costs.
Paradise Square started off kind of slow, like a plane taxiing around the runway, before revving up and taking off with some showstoppers to close out the first act on a strong note. Following intermission the show flew high all the way to the end when the audience went absolutely nuts at the performance we attended. They were all on their feet whooping and clapping madly, before the over the top finale was even finished. Joaquina Kalukango really blew the roof off like, like, well, like a star will do. If you saw the Tony Awards, you already know she won for Lead Actress-Musical. Go and see this show and you’ll find out why. The show deserved more Tony Awards, in our opinion, but don’t let the lack of them put you off. The Inwood Gazette awards Paradise Square five thumbs up, our highest rating.
From the show’s synopsis:
“New York, 1863. As the Civil War rages on, free Black Americans and Irish immigrants live and love together in the unlikeliest of neighborhoods – the dangerous streets and crumbling tenement houses of Lower Manhattan’s notorious Five Points slum. 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. 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. These characters include the indomitable Black woman who owns it; her Irish-Catholic sister-in-law and her Black minister husband; a conflicted newly arrived Irish immigrant; a fearless freedom seeker; an anti-abolitionist political boss; and 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.
“With visceral and nuanced staging and choreography that captures the pulsating energy when Black and Irish cultures meet and set to a contemporary score that reimagines early American song, Paradise Square depicts an overlooked true-life moment when hope and possibility shone bright.”
You can get a little taste of Paradise over here.
It really is.
