Paradise Reviews
Broadway World- Highly Recommended
"...Kudos to director Michael Myers for his brilliant direction of a show destined to take the country by storm when it goes out on its first national tour! So if life is overwhelming and things just don't seem to be going your way, lighten up and forget your troubles for a few hours and I guarantee you will leave the Ruskin Group Theatre knowing they have made Paradise great again!"
Stage and Cinema- Recommended
"...I've always liked this project. I continue to believe that the creative team, Bill Robertson and Tom Sage (book/lyrics) and Cliff Wagner (book/music), have a winner on their hands that could go the distance and play in multiple productions across the country. Their development odyssey has involved some heavy hitters in the biz, and has done the show good. Yet there are some lingering effects of what I imagine were real differences about creative and commercial directions for the project."
Will Call- Highly Recommended
"...If you love country or bluegrass music, you'll think you really are in paradise. Actually, we're in a depressed, little coal mining town (cute set by Stephanie K. Schwartz), called Paradise, whose church just burnt down and whose economy has gone south. In the midst of this calamity arrives a charismatic, handsome evangelist, the Reverend John Cyrus Mountain (Jon Root) whose devilish good looks and glib tongue convinces the local rubes that building a mega-church will attract the tourists and make them rich, plus filming a TV reality show will make them all famous."
Total Theater- Highly Recommended
"...Paradise's story might be convoluted and crazy, but it is told in a snappy, bawdy way. All scenes are short and fast, ditto the seventeen songs sung by the talented cast, who are backed up by a four-man bluegrass band that really rocks."
Stage Raw- Somewhat Recommended
"...In the end, we're struck by the lack of originality and variety in the characters, who are neither whack-job-quirky nor small-town-sentimental enough to warm to. And the schematic, rather perfunctory plot just seems like a warmed-over copy of a copy of a copy that was stale to begin with."