The Grand Paradise NYC Reviews and Tickets
Member Reviews (73)
See it if you like intimate theater one on one. The world of the Grand Paradise Resort creates and evokes memories of things that might have been.
Don't see it if you need to sit down to enjoy a show. There are place to sit but the full experience depends on you to interact with the performers.
See it if you seek "immersive theatre" with an original storyline. It's not very complex, but a clever, fun exploration of sex & the art of seduction.
Don't see it if you're a passive audience member or you seek deep meaning. More orderly than Sleep No More, slower than Then She Fell & flimsier than both.
See it if Like the one-on-one interactive experience.
Don't see it if Don't want to be single-out. Looking for an actual story.
See it if you are an immersive theatre junkie.
Don't see it if narrative is a necessity for you.
See it if you like Sleep No More or Then She Fell
Don't see it if you have to be in control of your own experience and need to have linear plot
See it if you like these kinds of things. This wasn't my favorite, but getting to essentially see a show no one else does is really cool.
Don't see it if this is not your kind of show or you can't walk around for a long time.
See it if You enjoy creativity on a grand scale, inventive theater, immersive experiences, a choose your own adventure. Have seen this show 3 times!
Don't see it if Being touched, nudity, alone in tight, dark spaces bother you.
See it if You'd like an immersive experience at a tropical resort, and partaking in philosophical repertoire. You will feel welcome at every turn.
Don't see it if You are uncomfortable being intimately touched by strangers, gratutitious nudity, or tire of repetitive exotic dance routines
Critic Reviews (24)
"'The Grand Paradise' the latest and lushest of the many immersive theater spectacles to set up camp in New York in recent years, traffics in instant nostalgia...The effect is of taking and remembering a wild vacation at the same time...Using the ’70s as a time frame turns out to have been an inspired idea...It winds up hitting home. Your stay at the 'Grand Paradise' lasts a precisely measured two hours. But I can promise you that when it’s over, you’ll have little idea how long you’ve been there."
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"The piece is a captivatingly sensual interactive adventure. After an initial group welcome, you wander through a labyrinth of locations, immersed in a whirl of music, dance and ’70s atmospherics...The show’s running themes are love, death and the space where they meet, otherwise known as nostalgia. This escapist world is our oyster, where each grain of sand in an hourglass has a shot at becoming a pearl."
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"'The Grand Paradise' is somewhat more structured than 'Sleep No More.'...During my two-hour stay, I caught (among other things) a dance party, a bar fight, and a young man dancing and disrobing on a beach...Some parts are more engaging than others. But on the whole, 'The Grand Paradise' is extremely impressive in the scope of its detail. Personally, I wouldn’t mind taking in another show to observe different characters."
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"As a piece of engineering, 'The Grand Paradise' is fairly impressive...But all this effort has resulted in a largely vacuous event...At least at a play -- a good one, anyway -- you get something to think about. 'The Grand Paradise' is rather like going to a party where the guest list consists of eccentric strangers."
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"One of the beauties of 'The Grand Paradise' is that it allows for so many of these smaller, intimate moments. The cast, all trained as dancers, effortlessly and elegantly guide the audience through the evening and truly make you feel as if the performance was being done exclusively for you...Audiences escape for two hours that both fly by and yet feel satisfyingly endless."
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“What this theatrical experience, conveyed by the brilliant minds at Third Rail Projects, gets right from the very start is that there is always an element of the forbidden when it comes to finding pleasure…The concept beautifully epitomizes what has become more than clear when it comes to the arts, which is the notion that in the digital age plot has truly become irrelevant when you could offer guests an experience instead.…The path followed by this reviewer was both erotic and moving.”
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"This immersive show holds the promise of a sensual, boundary-pushing adventure, but in reality it suffers from tiresome repetition and without a solid dramaturgical core there’s limited bang for your substantial buck...It's challenging to give over completely to an environment that is tightly controlled, vaguely executed, and lacking in any real risks...Nostalgia can only get you so far if it’s denuded of meaning...For a show about sex and desire, it was quite tepid and tame."
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“'The Grand Paradise' can be a fun, hip and sensuous two-hour holiday...One difference could be crucial to your enjoyment...The context in 'The Grand Paradise' is less specific (the 1970s), its cultural allusions less direct and less substantive (Fantasy Island comes to mind)...What’s on offer here may be a kind of faux-nostalgia, and a hip factor that may exert a kind of peer pressure."
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