Great Comet needed a way to sell tickets, and big names seemed to work.

After Groban extended his run to early July, the show cast singer-songwriter Ingrid Michaelson as Sonya, replacing Brittain Ashford, a stand-out in the cast, a strategy that helped it keep up ticket sales during the difficult summer months, though perhaps not sustainable long-term. Signs of trouble for the show began popping up earlier this summer. Wardrobe crew member Emma Atherton helps Malloy into his costume. Life being what it is, we make do with what is less than perfect. The Great Comet is both a vehicle for and example of that idea - if circumstances were different, we might be heroes. There’s a scene, late in the musical, in which Pierre tells Natasha, the disgraced ingenue, “If I were not myself, but the brightest, handsomest, best man on Earth,” he might declare his love to her. It was inevitable it would have to close someday, and so that day came sooner than we had hoped.” “In the emotional roller-coaster of the last few weeks,” he says, “the thing I keep coming back to is how absurd it is that I’m standing here at all. Malloy, who wears thin-framed glasses and has a Yogi Bear–like enthusiasm, is still trying to level with how everything played out. He’s not the star the show might have needed, but a compelling presence, in part because of that absence. He is, as it turns out, a great Pierre, with big cumbersome hands and a thoughtful gleam in his eyes - the perfect misfit. So, Malloy is back to shepherd it through its final performances. With no name big enough to carry it, The Great Comet announced its closing shortly thereafter. “Why would you want to step into that mess?”

“Of course he dropped out, I don’t blame him at all,” Malloy says backstage, before the show. The producers and creative team apologized, but the damage was done. Advocates for diversity on Broadway were furious. Midway through the summer, the show suddenly announced that it would replace Groban’s replacement - Hamilton’s Okieriete “Oak” Onaodowan, a black actor – with Mandy Patinkin, a famous white actor. Then it all collapsed.Īfter Groban’s departure, ticket sales declined. The Great Comet, an experimental, almost entirely sung-through electro-pop musical about Russian aristocrats, somehow earned 12 Tony nominations and sold lots of tickets. It retained most of its original cast, crew, and creative team, with a few significant tweaks: Josh Groban, for instance, replaced Malloy in the lead role. Born in an 87-seat theater in Ars Nova, the show, an adaptation of a sliver of War & Peace, followed an arcing trajectory to the 1,138-seat Imperial Theatre in the fall of 2016, thanks in large part to director Rachel Chavkin’s immersive vision and a proscenium-breaking set from Mimi Lien. Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812 will close, three days later, on September 3.Īt this point in the show’s run, Malloy wasn’t supposed to be playing Pierre, though the show was never really supposed to make it to Broadway anyway. Then Malloy steps onstage, joining the rest of the ensemble in singing, dancing, cheering, and drinking. A Russian-accented announcement goes off in the theater telling the audience to silence their phones. He drinks tea to preserve his voice and chats with cast members backstage. He slips on an incompletely buttoned yellow vest, straps on an accordion. Crew members arrive to tease out his hair and help him into the costume of the awkward protagonist. Backstage at the Imperial Theatre, Dave Malloy is preparing to play Pierre, a role he has slipped into on and off since 2012, in the musical he started writing a few years before that.

Great comet