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    ‘Paradise Square’ Faces New Complaints Over Payments

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    The shuttered show is facing legal action from the actors, stage managers and designers who worked on the production.A union representing the director and choreographers who worked on the recently closed Broadway musical “Paradise Square” is asking a federal court to enforce an arbitration award that was agreed upon in May, according to a lawsuit filed late last month.The Stage Directors and Choreographers Society asked the Federal District Court in Manhattan to confirm and compel payment of nearly $150,000 that is owed to the union; the show’s director, Moisés Kaufman; the choreographer Bill T. Jones; and a few others who worked on the production.The suit, filed on July 22, said the production company still had not “satisfied its obligations under the award.”The lawsuit names as defendants the limited partnership that produced “Paradise Square,” a musical set amid the racial strife of Civil War-era New York City, as well as Bernard Abrams, a producer who is a member of the Broadway League.The show, however, has been most closely associated with the producer Garth H. Drabinsky, who had a successful run as a theatrical impresario in the 1990s until he was charged with misconduct and fraud in the United States and in his native Canada, where he eventually served prison time.Drabinsky had hoped that “Paradise Square,” which ran at the Ethel Barrymore Theater from mid-March until July 17, would be his comeback. The show originated a decade ago as a musical called “Hard Times,” written by Larry Kirwan of the band Black 47 and leaning on the music of Stephen Foster, who wrote “Oh! Susanna” among other American standards. Delayed two years because of the coronavirus pandemic, it made its way to Broadway after out-of-town productions in Berkeley, Calif., and Chicago. The show received 10 Tony nominations but took home only one award, for the actress Joaquina Kalukango, whose performance was a signature of this year’s Tony Awards ceremony. The show struggled at the box office throughout its run, and it did not recover the $15 million for which it was capitalized.Richard Roth, a lawyer for the “Paradise Square” partnership, said on Monday, “My understanding is that everyone is going to be fully paid.”Abrams did not respond to requests for comment Monday.Through Roth — who pointed out that Drabinsky is not a member of the limited partnership — Drabinsky released a lengthy statement arguing that Covid had proved an insurmountable roadblock to the show’s sales and finances. He added that bonds worth nearly $450,000 that were put up by the producers should cover most of what the actors were owed.“Equity holds this bond security,” Drabinsky said, and “the lawsuits that have been filed by unions are simply to evidence the collection of amounts for which the partnership has previously consented. In this regard, I have never been a signing officer of the production, nor do I have any authority with respect to the signing of any bank instruments. Any delay in benefit payments was simply a function of available cash flow.”The Hollywood Reporter first reported the existence of the legal filing Monday.The unions representing actors and designers who appeared in or worked on the musical have also received arbitration awards for hundreds of thousands of dollars. In July, the United Scenic Artists’ local also went to federal court to seek confirmation and enforcement of its award. In the spring, the Actors’ Equity fund trustees went to court to enforce an arbitration award.The unions have also placed Drabinsky on their “do not work” lists. The directors and choreographers union automatically placed the producers on a similar list until the outstanding arbitration award is paid, according to a union official.The president of the local union of the American Federation of Musicians, Tino Gagliardi, said through a spokesman that “Local 802 and the musicians’ benefit funds are taking every legal action needed to recover wages and benefits that are due to the musicians.”Al Vincent Jr., the executive director of Equity, added in an email statement that the dispute was not over, saying, “Our process of getting our members appropriately paid for ‘Paradise Square’ continues with a number of outstanding grievances moving into arbitration.”Local 829, the scenic artists’ union, put Drabinsky on its “boycott list” because of “continued inaction and lack of communication regarding the significant payments and benefits,” said Carl Mulert, the local’s national business agent. “It is unfortunate that the legacy of this Broadway production, which includes the indelible contributions of our colleagues and kin on and off the stage, has been marred by a story of exploitation of and injustice for the many artists that have brought ‘Paradise Square’ to life.” More

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      ‘Paradise Square’ Will Close on Broadway After Winning One Tony

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      The new musical was an unsuccessful comeback attempt by the storied producer Garth H. Drabinsky.“Paradise Square,” a dance-rich Broadway musical about race relations in Civil War-era New York City, will close Sunday, after weeks trying to overcome persistently soft sales.The musical, which began previews March 15 and opened April 3, was an unsuccessful comeback attempt by the storied producer Garth H. Drabinsky, who after winning three Tony Awards in the 1990s was convicted of fraud in Canada and served time there.The show, set in Lower Manhattan in 1863, is about a low-income neighborhood in which African Americans and Irish immigrants formed a community that was upended by the Civil War draft riots. The musical is big, with a large cast and lots of production numbers, and won 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 just one, for Kalukango. Her rousing performance at the Tony Awards of the show’s 11 o’clock number, “Let It Burn,” was well received, but the night did not translate to enough ticket sales to keep the show alive.“We wanted to give ‘Paradise Square’ every chance to succeed, but various challenges proved insurmountable,” Drabinsky said in announcing the closure.The show has had a long and complicated history. It started, a decade ago, as “Hard Times,” by Larry Kirwan of the band Black 47, and the early productions, at the Cell in New York, relied 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 from Foster’s music and biography. Before Broadway, there was a production at the nonprofit Berkeley Repertory Theater in California, and a commercial run in Chicago; neither was especially well-received, but the production pressed on, convinced that word-of-mouth would be strong.The Broadway production was unable to break through during a competitive season, with tourism still down because of the coronavirus pandemic, and a raft of new shows all seeking attention. “Paradise Square,” with an unfamiliar title, a non-famous cast, and middling reviews, was unable to find its footing; it has consistently sold far less than other Broadway musicals and far less than it needed to sell to pay for its weekly running costs; during the week ending June 5, it grossed a paltry $229,337 and played to 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 will be lost. More

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      Review: In ‘Paradise Square,’ Racial Harmony Turns to Discord

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      In a new musical starring Joaquina Kalukango, the love between Black and Irish New Yorkers in a Manhattan bar is threatened by Civil War riots.Everything in “Paradise Square” is true. Nothing in “Paradise Square” is true.Yes, history shows that in 1863, after Abraham Lincoln extended the Civil War draft to include all white men between the ages of 25 and 45 — Black men being excepted because they were not considered citizens — mobs of disgruntled Irish Americans rose up against Black people in New York, burning buildings and killing many in their path.And it’s true that in the impoverished, piano-shaped district of downtown Manhattan called Five Points, some Black and Irish neighbors who had been living together in relative harmony joined forces to resist the mobs.But in hammering these large-scale events into individual stories, and in manipulating them so performers have reason to sing at top volume and dance nearly nonstop, the uplifting, star-making, overwrought new musical, which opened on Sunday at the Ethel Barrymore Theater, turns history on its head. Racism becomes an individual character flaw instead of a systemic evil; resistance, the solitary moral genius of a hero.Chloe Davis, foreground center left, and Sidney DuPont in the musical.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesIn this case, the hero is Nelly O’Brien, or really Joaquina Kalukango, who plays her with enough guts, stamina and vocal bravura to make you believe in a character glued together from the shavings of history. Nelly is the proprietor of a (fictional) Five Points bar and brothel called Paradise Square: “a little Eden” where, as one of the bald lyrics by Nathan Tysen and Masi Asare puts it in the title song, “We love who we want to love/with no apology.”Indeed, Nelly is married to the Irish American Willie O’Brien (Matt Bogart, suitably strapping). His sister (and Nelly’s best friend), Annie Lewis (Chilina Kennedy, absurdly fierce), is married to a Black minister, the Rev. Samuel Jacob Lewis (Nathaniel Stampley). When Annie’s nephew Owen (A.J. Shively) arrives from Ireland, around the same time that Samuel, a stationmaster on the Underground Railroad, brings Washington Henry (Sidney DuPont) to Paradise Square en route from Tennessee to Canada, the joint begins to seem like a rooming house for incendiary plot points.The cast of “Paradise Square” includes, foreground from left: Gabrielle McClinton, DuPont, Kalukango, Chilina Kennedy, Nathaniel Stampley and Davis.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesMost of the characters — and there are 10 major roles — seem less like people than ideas with human masks. Willie’s war buddy Mike Quinlan (Kevin Dennis) represents the unemployed Irish workers easily swayed by demagogic politicians. A white pianist and composer who turns plantation tunes into uptown hits (Jacob Fishel) represents, somewhat anachronistically, the problem of cultural appropriation — though it’s a nice touch that some Stephen Foster songs, like “Camptown Races,” are reappropriated in Jason Howland’s music.Another Foster song — “Oh! Susanna” — gets an even more interesting overhaul, insidiously connecting the show’s all-purpose villain, Frederic Tiggens, as he fans the Irish rebellion, to racist Southern tropes. (Foster’s melody is reset with the lyric “You were true to a country that wasn’t true to you.”) Alas, none of Tiggens’s dialogue is as subtle; a vaguely defined “uptown party boss” set on shutting down the “depravity” of places like Paradise Square, he leaves the performer John Dossett little to do but metaphorically twirl his mustaches.If most of the score suffers from a mild case of overstatement — whipping up a series of generic rock ballads and throat-shredding anthems — the book and staging suffer from full-blown emphasitis. The book, credited to Christina Anderson, Craig Lucas and Larry Kirwan, is especially problematic. Based on Kirwan’s musical play “Hard Times,” and apparently rewritten heavily in nine years of development, it strips everything down to the naked basics as it tries to accommodate so many characters along with a checklist of sensitivities.Kevin Dennis, far left, and A.J. Shively, top right, rise up against the draft in the musical.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesI’m a sucker as much as the next critic for liberal pieties, and I appreciate the stance of a musical centered on Black lives that has its heroine say, near the end, “We pass on to you this story on our own terms.” But strong stances do not make up for weak characterization or suggest why such strength is necessary. That the position of the Irish and other white immigrants is not nearly as effectively dramatized as that of the Black characters is morally good but theatrically dull.In that combination, I feel the meaty hand of the producer Garth H. Drabinsky, who seems to have used his influence to shape “Paradise Square” into a likeness of his previous hits. Like “Ragtime” in 1998 and the 1994 revival of “Show Boat,” it frames social unrest as the product of a few representative individuals and tries to fill the inevitable gaps with big sound and stagecraft. It also borrows a famous plot device from “Show Boat” — which is effective here even if the debt goes otherwise unpaid.But unlike those musicals, which were built on the frames of strongly written novels by authors with singular voices, “Paradise Square” feels almost authorless despite its many contributors, and the direction of Moisés Kaufman, known for a strong hand and conceptual coherence, does little to erase the impression of anonymity. (The design elements are likewise merely efficient.) Contingent and anxious, the show seems more interested in saying the right things than in telling a coherent story.DuPont, left, and Shively in the show, which has choreography by Bill T. Jones.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesWait — I take that back: It does tell a coherent story, in two ways. One is in the dancing, which employs a kaleidoscopic crash of contextual styles, including step dance for the Irish characters and Juba for the Black ones, to explore, far more subtly than the book, the place where appropriation and joyful sharing meet. (If unlikely as a plot point, the dance-off between Owen and Washington is a high point emotionally.) Again, many hands are at work here, with Bill T. Jones heading a musical staging team of at least five other choreographers, but the result scores its points effectively.The other source of coherence in “Paradise Square” is Kalukango, who somehow alchemizes the remarkable difficulties of the role into her characterization, making it incredible in the good way instead of the bad. Having seen her previously as Cleopatra in “Antony and Cleopatra,” Nettie in “The Color Purple” and Kaneisha in “Slave Play,” I am not exactly surprised, but they were more successful pieces of writing. Nothing really prepares you for the moment when an actor brings everything she has to the stage and essentially writes what needs to be said while you watch. It makes you believe in making history.Paradise SquareAt the Ethel Barrymore Theater, Manhattan; paradisesquaremusical.com. Running time: 2 hours and 40 minutes. More

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      A Producer Seeks a Broadway Comeback, Mired in Offstage Drama

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      With the musical “Paradise Square” preparing to open Sunday, Garth Drabinsky is hoping to re-establish himself after serving time in a Canadian prison for fraud.Ten days before opening night of his Broadway show, “Paradise Square,” Garth Drabinsky was sitting at a breakfast table at the Peninsula Hotel in Midtown Manhattan, fending off a stream of cellphone calls from members of his production team.That morning’s crisis: Chilina Kennedy, one of the show’s lead actresses, had called in sick (and would be out for nine days after testing positive for coronavirus). Drabinsky decided which of the two understudies should take her place. A few minutes later, he spoke with the director Moisés Kaufman.“You’re happy with the choice?” Drabinsky asked. He listened. “Yeah, right, but make sure that she can really deliver ‘Someone to Love,’” one of the musical’s big ballads. “And the comedy.”The days before an opening are always stressful for a Broadway producer. But few have been under a harsher spotlight than Drabinsky, a storied Canadian impresario whose return to Broadway has generated the sort of drama that even he couldn’t have scripted.First came the pandemic, which delayed the show’s Broadway opening by two years. Then an out-of-town run in Chicago last fall drew mixed reviews and (hampered by the Covid-19 surge) disappointing sales. The show’s preview performances on Broadway have earned only around $350,000 per week at the box office, with most of the seats filled by heavily discounted or even free tickets. That’s not the best omen for a producer who is staking everything on his big comeback after an ignominious fall.He was a brash outsider even during his heyday in the 1990s, when he took a string of Tony-winning musicals to Broadway, among them “Ragtime,” “Kiss of the Spider Woman” and a revival of “Show Boat.” Then, in 1998, his company, Livent, imploded, and Drabinsky was accused of understating expenses and inflating profits in order to disguise the company’s precarious financial state. He was eventually convicted of fraud and forgery in his native Canada, and served 17 months of a five-year sentence, before being paroled in February 2013.Now, he’s back. And he hasn’t lost his salesman’s bravado, his lawyerly verbosity or his passion for theater, even though his show has faced many challenges, including questions about its financial health.Sidney DuPont, left, and A.J. Shively in the musical “Paradise Square,” which opens Sunday at the Barrymore Theater.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesAs New York rehearsals started in February, stories began circulating about slow payments, contract problems and a budget ($13.5 million, according to Drabinsky) that seemed on the slim side for a big Broadway musical with a performing company of nearly 40 and a producer known for lavish spending. Actors Equity, the performers’ union, even instructed the cast not to show up for rehearsals one day, so that it could deal with a “failure to provide our members with contracts reflecting their agreed-upon terms of employment” and “a myriad of other significant contract violations,” according to an Equity statement.“When Garth Drabinsky is involved, people are rightly concerned that all the I’s are dotted and the T’s are crossed,” said David Levy, an Equity spokesman. The problems were apparently resolved, but it was hardly the sort of incident anyone wants at the outset of a Broadway run.Drabinsky blamed a delay in delivering final contracts for the dispute, and misunderstandings about what the actors were owed when the show transferred to New York from Chicago. “The Chicago contract froze the deal for New York,” he said. “There was no variation allowed. They were asking for something we were not committed to give.”What’s more, Drabinsky stressed, he is not in charge of the show’s finances — an arrangement made explicit by the limited partnership formed to bring it to Broadway. “I walked away from every element of fiscal control of this show,” he added. “I don’t sign checks. I don’t get involved. I never want to live through the horror of what I went through in 1998 again.”Instead, he’s been working to get “Paradise Square” in shape for Broadway. The show began life nine years ago with a small-scale musical called “Hard Times,” written by the Irish American musician Larry Kirwan, lead singer of the rock band Black 47. It is set during the Civil War, in the gritty Five Points neighborhood of Manhattan, where Irish immigrants and freed Black Americans lived together — and where Stephen Foster (whose music formed the bulk of the score) resided during his final years. The show climaxes with the draft riots of 1863, when white working-class New Yorkers formed violent racist mobs following a draft lottery.Drabinsky loved the concept, but shied away from anchoring the show in Foster’s music, with its romanticization of the slavery-era South. So he set about reworking the piece, hiring the composer Jason Howland to write a new score (only two Foster songs remain), a succession of writers to shift the story’s focus to the owner of a neighborhood saloon (played by the Tony nominee Joaquina Kalukango), and a top-notch creative team, including Kaufman, as the director, along with the choreographer Bill T. Jones.The themes of racial justice and the immigrant experience have long attracted Drabinsky, and their currency has only grown in the years of development, which included a 2019 workshop production in Berkeley, Calif. “When the show began to parallel what was happening today in America and the world, it was sort of freaky,” he said. “And it hasn’t stopped changing. Even to the point that days before our first preview, Russia invades Ukraine. Three million immigrants are now looking for a new home.”Drabinsky also made an effort to diversify the creative team, hiring Christina Anderson, a Black playwright, to revise Craig Lucas and Kirwan’s script, and the composer-lyricist Masi Asare, who collaborated with Nathan Tysen on the lyrics.Still, suspicion of Drabinsky runs high in the Broadway community, where many were burned financially by his company’s bankruptcy.Yet some people clearly are willing to give him another shot. The list of more than 30 producers for “Paradise Square” includes few established Broadway names, but many who have confidence in Drabinsky’s record as a dedicated, hands-on producer. Among them are the former Queens congressman Joe Crowley (who was brought into the project by Kirwan); Matthew Blank, the former head of Showtime who is now interim chief executive of AMC Networks; and Richard Stursberg, a former top executive at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.Drabinsky’s former company, Livent, brought a critically acclaimed revival of “Showboat” to the Gershwin Theater in 1994.Sara Krulwich/The New York Times“I liked the dynamic of this motivated producer, needy of success, putting it all on the line,” said Jeffrey Sine, another producer, whose Broadway credits include “Beautiful: The Carole King Musical.” “I think people deserve a second chance.”Or third or fourth. Drabinsky, 72, grew up in Toronto. At age 4 he contracted polio and spent much of his childhood in hospitals, distracting himself with music on his transistor radio — everything from ’50s rock ’n’ roll to Charles Aznavour. He earned a law degree, but soon turned to the entertainment business, building the Cineplex Odeon chain of movie theaters, before resigning in 1989 amid concerns about the company’s financial health.He re-emerged as a theater mogul, parlaying a long-running Toronto production of “The Phantom of the Opera” at his Pantages Theater into a far-flung company, Livent, that owned theaters (in New York, Chicago and elsewhere) and produced the shows that went into them. He pioneered a new business model for Broadway: Rather than cobbling together investors for each new show, Livent was a vertically integrated company that used the profits from its theaters and touring shows to finance the new work.But it all came crashing down in 1998, after the struggling company was bought by the Hollywood agent Michael Ovitz and the investment banker Roy Furman, who discovered bookkeeping irregularities. Drabinsky was fired; bankruptcy followed; and fraud charges were brought against Drabinsky and his longtime associate Myron Gottlieb, both in the Southern District of New York and (after Drabinsky fled to Toronto) in Canada as well.Drabinsky doesn’t like to talk much about that time. His finances were decimated, and his reputation a shambles. A rare bright spot was the Orthodox rabbi who began visiting him in prison. “It came at the time when I was at my absolute lowest emotionally,” he said. “It gave me a bit of a second wind.” He said he and the rabbi have met regularly for lunch ever since.Two years after his release from prison, he received a diagnosis of Stage 4 melanoma, cancer of the skin that had metastasized to his lungs. (After a year of immunotherapy, he said he is cancer free.) He returned to producing with the musical “Sousatzka” (backed by a Canadian company in which he has no financial interest), but that closed in Toronto after poor reviews. And still, Drabinsky was unable to travel to the United States because of the pending indictment against him in New York. That changed in July 2018, when the New York prosecutors dismissed the charges, noting that he had already served time for essentially the same crimes.“Paradise Square” is the sort of serious, original musical that Broadway claims to want more of. Yet without a major star, or a presold brand to market (and little advertising thus far), it faces a tough road. Much is riding on the critics’ reactions, which will come after Sunday’s opening. But Drabinsky remains upbeat, citing the “wonderful” audience response and positive tweets.“I made the decision, in terms of marketing, that our best course was to ensure that we filled the previews to capacity at whatever average ticket price we could get, and let word of mouth take over,” he said.His showman’s optimism is bolstered by a sober, even sentimental, belief in redemption. “There is a spirit in the soul of this country,” he said, “that allows somebody the opportunity to come back and work hard and be able to deliver a cultural work hopefully that will be meaningful. It’s one of the things that fills my heart every day.”Whether “Paradise Square” fills the seats at the Ethel Barrymore Theater will decide if Drabinsky has a future on Broadway — or whether it’s back to square one. More

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      New Musical About 19th-Century New York Plans Broadway Run

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      “Paradise Square,” a comeback bid by a scandal-scarred producer, is the first previously unscheduled musical to announce its Broadway opening since the pandemic began.“Paradise Square,” a new musical that explores race relations in 19th-century New York, plans to open on Broadway next winter, making it the first previously unscheduled musical to step forward since the pandemic began.The show, which has been reworked and in development for a decade, is about a long-gone slum in Lower Manhattan, Five Points, where, during the run-up to the Civil War, free Black residents and Irish immigrants coexisted until the draft riots of 1863.Not only about the history of New York City, the musical is also about the history of music and dance. It features songs by Stephen Foster, a prominent 19th-century American songwriter who spent time toward the end of his life in Five Points, and it credits the Five Points community with a role in the origins of tap dance. (Tap is an American dance form that is generally understood to have roots in the British Isles and Africa; it has a complex and murky history, but the dancing cellars of the Five Points were an important site of development for the form.)“Paradise Square” is a comeback bid by a storied Canadian producer, Garth Drabinsky, who won three Tony Awards in the 1990s but then was convicted of fraud. He served time in a Canadian prison; charges in the United States were later dismissed.The musical is to star Joaquina Kalukango, a Tony nominee for “Slave Play,” as the proprietor of the saloon in which much of the action takes place. Other cast members include Chilina Kennedy (“Beautiful”), John Dossett (a Tony nominee for “Gypsy”), Sidney DuPont (“Beautiful”), A.J. Shively (“Bright Star”), Nathaniel Stampley (“The Color Purple”), Gabrielle McClinton (“Pippin”) and Jacob Fishel (“Fiddler on the Roof”).The Broadway run is scheduled to begin previews Feb. 22 and to open March 20 at the Ethel Barrymore Theater. Before the pandemic, the plan was to capitalize the musical for up to $13.5 million, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission; a spokesman said the actual capitalization will probably be somewhat less.The show has a complex production history and an evolving creative team, led by the director Moisés Kaufman (best known as the creator of “The Laramie Project”) and the choreographer Bill T. Jones (a two-time Tony winner, for “Fela!” and “Spring Awakening”). It is based on a musical called “Hard Times,” which was conceived by Larry Kirwan, the lead singer of Black 47, and staged at the Cell Theater in 2012. Then, as “Paradise Square,” it had a production at Berkeley Repertory Theater in 2019, and this fall, before transferring to Broadway, it is scheduled to have a five-week run at the James M. Nederlander Theater in Chicago.The book is now credited to four writers: Kirwan and three playwrights, Christina Anderson, Marcus Gardley and Craig Lucas. The score, which includes original songs as well as some attributed to Foster, now has three writers: Jason Howland, Nathan Tysen and Masi Asare.Kaufman said the interruption of the pandemic provided the creative team “an opportunity to think.”“At Berkeley we learned that our story is epic, but we needed to continue focusing on our individual characters,” he said. “And that’s the work that’s occurred.”Brian Seibert contributed reporting. More