Dave Malloy commets on Oak's Leave

I think someone posted this in the "Mandy Joining" thread, but I thought it deserved one of its own:

(From Dave Malloy's Twitter):

"hey all. bit of a devastating last 24 hours. so sorry for how everything went down. nothing but love and awe for @OakSmash. the show was in desperate shape. sales after ingrid leaving August 13 were catastrophically low. show would've closed. it's apparently a weird show. turns out it needs a name to sell it. mandy is a beautiful legend. had no idea. he didn't ask to out oak, the show asked him to come asap because we were on the brink of closing. so sorry to have missed the racial optics of it. we had to do same thing with dear beloved brittain so in my head it was no different. please don't give mandy grief, he's devastated. i am not sure that the show has a future now. signing off now. going for ice cream or whiskey or likely both. so sorry. thank you for the love."

Um. Wow.

(Link: https://twitter.com/dave_malloy/status/891015638751248388)

Updated On: 7/28/17 at 03:38 PM

WOW is right. So they also pushed out Brittain? Didn't they say she was gonna come back too. What a huge mess this is.

Oof. Malloy is a very genuine, heartfelt guy- the emotion behind that is palpable.

SO much respect for Malloy's transparency and earnestness.

It really does sound like this is just an unfortunate circumstance. It had nothing to do with race at all. I can't imagine how everyone must be feeling.

Terribly sad, Broadway can be a cruel business. What a shame that the Tonys didn't share the love with other deserving shows instead of just ones that were already big hits. Absolute respect to Dave.

I don't think anything on twitter has ever made me this sad, and twittier is a hostile, angry place.

Imagine how awful he must feel, not only is the show not doing well, but he's being called a racist for just trying to keep it afloat.

Kad said: "It'd be viciously ironic if Mandy withdrew due to the controversy and the production shuttered quickly, putting an entire diverse ensemble out of work."

Was this ever a rumor, or are you just being spicy?

LizzieCurry said: "Kad said: "It'd be viciously ironic if Mandy withdrew due to the controversy and the production shuttered quickly, putting an entire diverse ensemble out of work."

Was this ever a rumor, or are you just being spicy?"

The latter, I assure you! I have heard nothing that even remotely suggests this is a possibility.

Nick Choksi retweeted Dave's first tweet and said: "Facts: 1-POC have it rough 2-@dave_malloy and @rachelchavkin are allies 3-Oak is amazing 4-This decision wasn’t about race. #makeroomforoak"

https://twitter.com/NickChoksi/status/891018770981978113

Egads...Wow, that bad?? I'm not saying I was a fan of the show, I wasn't, but It's still a good show overall, but reminder...it's such an eclectic piece of weirdness that was still very risky and was always going to be hard to keep open because of it. I think it got TOO interactive (among other things) and audiences still don't know what to make of that. They'd still rather SEE a show, not be in one. I have a feeling this will be a December-January closing victim now. I'm honestly surprised it lasted this long.

froote said: "Terribly sad, Broadway can be a cruel business. What a shame that the Tonys didn't share the love with other deserving shows instead of just ones that were already big hits. Absolute respect to Dave.



"Huh? At the time -- with Groban -- "Great Comet" was a big hit. And many people seemed to think it would remain one without him. Turns out they were wrong.

I don't think I saw anyone predict that it would remain a big hit without a name, that was obvious whenever Groban called out and the sales went down. People were very pleasantly surprised it was making it to $900k the last two weeks and that's WITH Ingrid.