Paradise Blue Reviews

Washington Post- Highly Recommended

"...Director Raymond O. Caldwell's immersive staging performs more than one brilliant trick. It is first and foremost fantastically entertaining, the sort of 360 degree experience that's become increasingly common as theater strives to compete with streaming media. The setup - bar service at intimate tables and enthralling action all around - is ideally suited to a story that's as much about its characters as the place where they live."

DC Theater Arts- Highly Recommended

"...From the physical space where Studio Theatre sits at the historical epicenter of Black culture in DC to the narrative epicenter of Black Bottom in 1949 Detroit, Paradise Blue is impeccably aware of where it is in time, space, and message - the power of which feels more relevant with each passing day. Paradise Blue at Studio Theatre engulfs you in a raw urgency and mirrors back the hope for home, the refuge in music, the safety of agency, and the curse of legacy that drives its world."

MetroWeekly- Highly Recommended

"...With its smoky, seductive, immersive staging of Dominique Morisseau's Paradise Blue, Studio Theatre turns up the heat and the suspense. Part of the playwright's acclaimed Detroit Trilogy - which includes Skeleton Crew and Detroit '67 - the narrative is set in 1949, in the city's storied Black Bottom neighborhood, inside the fictional club, Paradise. The club's jazz comes spiced with blues and bebop, courtesy of the house band led by trumpeter and club owner Blue (Amari Cheatom)."

Talkin Broadway- Highly Recommended

"...Washington's Studio Theatre has found a uniquely effective way of blurring the boundaries between performer and audience in its current production of Dominique Morisseau's Paradise Blue. Set designer Lawrence E. Moten III has reconfigured Studio's Victor Shargai Theatre, with its exposed bare walls and open space, into Paradise, a jazz club in 1949 Detroit where the audience is part of the show."

Washington City Paper- Recommended

"...Paradise Blue-one of three plays MacArthur "Genius" Dominique Morisseau has written surveying Black life in her native Detroit in various historical eras-had its world premiere a decade ago, but this might be the first time it's been staged in a place that resonates so deeply with the history it conjures up, given that Studio is just a few blocks south of the U Street corridor that, a century ago, comprised the District's own "Black Broadway.""

MD Theatre Guide- Highly Recommended

"...Immersive theatre experiences can be somewhat tricky to do well. There's the logistics of it all, having actors disciplined enough not to be distracted or thrown off by less-than-conventional staging, and of course the audience cooperation piece is huge. Everything has to come together perfectly so that the focus stays on the story and the characters inhabiting the immersive theatrical world you've created. With acclaimed playwright Dominique Morisseau's "Paradise Blue," Studio Theatre pulls off a triumphant immersive production that gives an already powerful play another intense layer that needs to be experienced by every theatre aficionado."

BroadwayWorld- Somewhat Recommended

"...A superb troupe of five actors and a great trumpet player (Michael A. Thomas) do everything in their toolkit to realize Dominique Morisseau's significant play, Paradise Blue, about a Detroit jazz club caught in the post-World War II "urban renewal" which tampered with Black neighborhoods and lifestyles in American cities nationwide. They are substantially upstaged and undermined by director Raymond O. Caldwell's "concept" that a play about a jazz club ought to be set in a jazz club. So the audience sits in tiny, unforgiving, bentwood cafe chairs for the the two and a half hour show with lots of cigarette smoke and lights shining in their eyes, unable to ever fully see or hear the work the actors are doing because they're usually on or below the same level as the audience, turned away, or among the audience."