Garth Drabinsky: Last News

Three months after his hoped-for Broadway comeback Paradise Square closed amidst bad box office, legal battles, a Covid outbreak and allegations of a toxic work environment, producer Garth Drabinsky is suing Actors’ Equity for $50 million, accusing the union of waging “an intentional campaign of harassment and abuse” when it placed the Canada-based Drabinsky on its Do Not Work list last summer.

As widely expected, the smash revival of Into The Woods will extend its limited engagement at Broadway’s St. James Theatre, producers announced today.

Actors’ Equity says it will place Broadway producer Garth Drabinsky on its “Do Not Work” list just as soon as his financially troubled musical Paradise Square ends its run with a matinee on Sunday at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre.

was produced by Canadian ex-convict Garth Drabinsky — the Grand Poobah of these slogs — a character sings, “We will never go back to before!” “Paradise Square” should have listened.

Naveen Kumar The body can sometimes say more than words, but even the most expressive moves cannot make a coherent case for “Paradise Square.” The blunt and belabored history lesson of a new musical set in Manhattan’s Five Points, and produced by Garth Drabinsky, purports to be a fable of American race relations. But while conflicts between the neighborhood’s Black and Irish residents at times come thrillingly to life through dance, “Paradise Square” is wrong-footed from the jump.Named for an all-are-welcome saloon in the downtown slum, the Broadway musical presents a clash of cultures inspired by true events. Irish immigrants and Black Americans are jostling to survive in a city of harsh promises and a country on the brink of Civil War.

Paradise Square makes quite the reach. A musical about the build-up to New York’s horrific Draft Riots of 1863 reaches to the past to tell us about the present. It reaches across cultures to tell us about assimilation and appropriation. It reaches across styles of music and dance to celebrate diversity and commonality. It reaches to contain both epic realism and mythical nostalgia. And somewhere along the line it reaches a point of no return, when all that reaching just wears itself out.