Riedel on more Comet Drama- Page 7

[dramamama611]

Posted: 8/9/17 at 6:50pm

If  Oak's contract had  run it's course, and then they brought in a white guy, I don't think this would have happened.  It's the firing of him that set it off.

[JayElle]

Posted: 8/9/17 at 6:53pm

Thanks for twitter link.  Don't get what oak was thinking.  Put everyone on street to spite producer?  Why didn't Howard line up future performers.   Perhaps Howard should take his money and do something else. Seems he can't get shows to stay open e.g. On the town.   

On the bright side at least these performers got a broadway debut.   So many try but never get it.  

[trpguyy]

Posted: 8/9/17 at 7:43pm

dramamama611 said: "If  Oak's contract had  run it's course, and then they brought in a white guy, I don't think this would have happened.  It's the firing of him that set it off."

and his unpreparedness is what made them consider firing him in the first place, but I guess none of that really matters anymore 

[dramamama611]

Posted: 8/9/17 at 7:57pm

Yes, but I was responding to the post above me.

 

From Back Row: Regardless of what actually happened with Comet, it seems to me that producers would try to discourage color blind casting in future shows due to the social media firestorm that came out of this situation. Why take the risk? From a business standpoint, you might find more producers choosing to go "safe and white" rather than risking something like this happening again by opening the casting up across racial boundaries. Nobody won here, and the producers may not end up being the biggest losers after everything shakes out.

[neonlightsxo]

Posted: 8/9/17 at 7:58pm

dramamama611 said: "If  Oak's contract had  run it's course, and then they brought in a white guy, I don't think this would have happened.  It's the firing of him that set it off."

I think you're right, which is why only the Kagans can be blamed here. 

 

[schubox]

Posted: 8/9/17 at 8:13pm

neonlightsxo said: "dramamama611 said: "If  Oak's contract had  run it's course, and then they brought in a white guy, I don't think this would have happened.  It's the firing of him that set it off."

I think you're right, which is why only the Kagans can be blamed here. 

 

 

"

There's plenty of blame to go around 

[PaulWom]

Posted: 8/9/17 at 8:34pm

I don't doubt we should discuss blame on the producers parts, especially because we don't know the story, but don't kid yourself- you don't think Oak's fanbase of rabid teen girls would've been all calm even if he had completed his run? I saw many of them tweeting things like "they cut his run 4 months short!"

[Dancingthrulife2]

Posted: 8/9/17 at 8:46pm

raddersons said: "HogansHero said: "@raddersons ok but you are still imagining that there was a narrative needing control. It is a fact that the production did not bad mouth Oak when they fired him (because they didn't say anything at that point) and the first comment by a person in a position of knowledge came from Malloy and that certainly drove a Mack Truck through the notion that this was a firing based on Oak's performance in any sense other than (no surprise) that he wasn't selling many tickets and the show was in a death spiral. (A fact that plenty of folks here are in total denial about.)"

Once again I just want to say this is pure speculation for fun and is to ease my woes about this show closing. I don't think any real 'facts' are necessary here. I certainly have none.
 

 

"

Ease your woe by placing possibly unwarranted blame on other people? Good for you.

[Dancingthrulife2]

Posted: 8/9/17 at 8:52pm

leighmiserables said: "Dancingthrulife2 said: " I know for a fact that many of my Asian American friends are just as oblivious to issues such as race and gender as most people not negatively affected by them."

Um...on behalf of my Asian American friends... 

what. 

 

"

I'm Asian myself and I can speak from my own experience. 

[bear88]

Posted: 8/9/17 at 8:59pm

If Onaodowan had finished his run, no one would be complaining. Not him, not anyone.

I don't know what really went down here, and I have no Broadway pals whispering in my ear, but it was the firing that started the whole Twitterstorm. I was sick that day and watched it happen online.

[At-the-glen]

Posted: 8/9/17 at 10:07pm

For my money, Howard Sherman in The Stage has it right: 

https://www.thestage.co.uk/opinion/2017/howard-sherman-bad-producing-decisions-made-great-comet-musical-crash-earth/

 

The Great Comet is burning out, and taking Natasha and Pierre with it. 

Unlike the recent closing of the play Indecent, which managed to go out as a triumph, with its final week also its bestselling after a six-week reprieve, Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812 is closing amid controversy, rancour and disappointment. This is a shame for a work that was in many ways more ambitious than much of what reaches Broadway. Great Comet ends its run on September 3. 

Recapping what Mark Shenton has already chronicled, the producers of Great Comet had replaced their original Pierre, Josh Groban, at the end of his planned run, with Okieriete Onaodowan, a member of the original cast of Hamilton. However, seeing that the show’s grosses were declining, and projecting further drops, the producers, led by Howard Kagan, announced just weeks after the actor began that Onaodowan, known to all as ‘Oak’, would depart early. His last three weeks would be performed by Mandy Patinkin, the original star of both Evita and Sunday in the Park With George on Broadway, who himself would stay for only three weeks. 

The news that Patinkin would supplant Oak was met with significant pushback online, decrying the sudden decision to replace an actor of colour with a white performer. Within a day, Patinkin withdrew and Oak made clear he wouldn’t be returning. 

After the initial wave of anger over what many perceived as racial insensitivity, if not outright racism, the story took a turn. Some pointed out that the production had a racially diverse cast and that, in defending Oak, they might be dooming the show without the box office boost from Patinkin. Dozens of people would be put out of work. Some will undoubtedly argue that that is what has come to pass. 

But is that the case? 

Regardless of the make-up of the show’s original or current cast, the decision summarily to replace an actor of colour, who was only scheduled to be in the show for two months, with a much older white man for a mere three weeks, was truly bad optics at the very least. At a time when racial representation in the arts is a subject of constant conversation, the decision looked awful, even if it was made with the intention of sustaining the show. But racial conflagration doesn’t sell seats. At least, I hope not. 

No one claimed that Oak was giving a bad performance. Having seen two other Pierres, I can state that he was at least the equal of both. The fact that business fell off without Groban shouldn’t have surprised anyone, least of all the producers, since they were going from a major recording star with a huge fan base to a talented working actor taking on his first above-the-title role. 

The cataclysm that hit Great Comet is rooted in the decision to cast Groban originally 

Pierre is, in many ways, not really a star part, except that a star has played it. 

On the one hand his presence no doubt lifted the show’s economic prospects considerably. While Great Comet was stupendously creative and ambitious, unlike few Broadway entries in my 35-plus years of seeing Broadway shows, it was also sufficiently unconventional to make it difficult to compete with more conventionally structured works, whether Dear Evan Hansen or Waitress. Groban helped to bridge what, for some, might have been an unapproachable chasm of style. 

But very often, once a show has a star, audiences come to expect a star throughout the run, even if each star is successively less famous. The Producers never really recovered on Broadway once Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick left (save for when they returned). Hello, Dolly! rides on the ability to cast almost any big-name musical actress over 40 in the title role, though Bette Midler is generating stratospheric grosses given her fame relative to the size of the theatre. But no one decides to see The Lion King or Cats based primarily on who is in it. The show, in effect, becomes the star. 

Would Patinkin have boosted the box office? Yes, I imagine so. I certainly would have enjoyed seeing him – although not once I understood his presence was unceremoniously supplanting Oak. 

Let’s also not forget that he was going in for only three weeks, until September 3. So what we have learned was that Great Comet was probably closing anyway. All Patinkin would have done was to yield three weeks of greater profits before the bottom fell out. If the producers had any idea, or plan, of what to do after September 3, it’s not in evidence. 

One has to admire the producers of Great Comet for getting it to Broadway, giving it wider exposure than it had at Ars Nova or Kazino, the tent that housed its runs in the Meatpacking District and in a parking lot off Eighth Avenue. 

But just as Great Comet started with an entirely unnecessary dispute over a contractual billing credit for Ars Nova, which flared publicly in a very ugly fashion, so too it is going out the same way. The racial controversy arose out of an effort to squeeze the few last dollars out of the show, both Oak and Mandy were put into untenable positions, and all of that served to obscure the fact that the production was going to close no matter what. 

Let’s remember the creative success of Great Comet and the many talented people in and behind it. But let’s also remember the unthinking and perhaps ugly producing decisions that marred its achievements, because they shouldn’t have happened at all.

[And Peggy]

Posted: 8/9/17 at 10:10pm

Hi, Howard. 

[VintageSnarker]

Posted: 8/9/17 at 10:16pm

Dancingthrulife2 said: "leighmiserables said: "Dancingthrulife2 said: " I know for a fact that many of my Asian American friends are just as oblivious to issues such as race and gender as most people not negatively affected by them."

Um...on behalf of my Asian American friends... 

what. 

 

"

I'm Asian myself and I can speak from my own experience. 

 

By talking about "many of your friends" you were attempting to generalize your anecdotal experience as applying to everyone in the Asian American community. Which... no. Super no. 

 

[Dancingthrulife2]

Posted: 8/9/17 at 10:26pm

VintageSnarker said: "Dancingthrulife2 said: "leighmiserables said: "Dancingthrulife2 said: " I know for a fact that many of my Asian American friends are just as oblivious to issues such as race and gender as most people not negatively affected by them."

Um...on behalf of my Asian American friends... 

what. 

 

"

I'm Asian myself and I can speak from my own experience. 

 

By talking about "many of your friends" you were attempting to generalize your anecdotal experience as applying to everyone in the Asian American community. Which... no. Super no. 

 

 

"

Please go back and read my original post. One needs to be able to tell the evidence or personal experience used to support a claim from the claim itself. It makes no sense to guess what the observation is used to support when the argument already exists.

[Dancingthrulife2]

Posted: 8/9/17 at 10:26pm

VintageSnarker said: "Dancingthrulife2 said: "leighmiserables said: "Dancingthrulife2 said: " I know for a fact that many of my Asian American friends are just as oblivious to issues such as race and gender as most people not negatively affected by them."

Um...on behalf of my Asian American friends... 

what. 

 

"

I'm Asian myself and I can speak from my own experience. 

 

By talking about "many of your friends" you were attempting to generalize your anecdotal experience as applying to everyone in the Asian American community. Which... no. Super no. 

 

 

"

Please go back and read my original post. One needs to be able to tell the evidence or personal experience used to support a claim from the claim itself. It makes no sense to guess what the observation is used to support when the argument already exists.