EXCLUSIVE: Paradise Square has had a bumpy road to Eden.

Nominated for 10 Tony Awards, the second-highest total of the season, it was Broadway’s worst-selling musical in the week ending on May 8, posting just $194,000 in ticket sales. Since its first preview on March 15 at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre, it hasn’t come close to its weekly breakeven — $599,000, per an estimate in its 2019 operating agreement. (Comparably sized musicals usually cost more to run.)

A new lawsuit against Paradise Square Broadway LP filed in New York Supreme Court, not far from where the Civil War-era musical is set, provides a window into the Garth Drabinsky production. It’s the Canadian producer’s first show on Broadway since he was convicted in 2009 in Ottawa, Ontario, of defrauding Livent Inc. shareholders of nearly half a billion dollars. Publicly-traded Livent, which Drabinsky co-founded, filed for bankruptcy protection in 1998.Continue Reading