Less than a day after Dan Harmon declared the future of Community “bleak,” the darkest timeline has gotten a little bit darker, with The Guardian reporting that Childish Gambino—a.k.a. former Community star Donald Glover—got booed off a stage earlier this week during a concert in Newcastle, Australia. Glover was scheduled to perform a sold-out show at The Cambridge Hotel on Thursday night, a performance billed as “Childish Gambino & Royalty,” which led the crowd to believe they’d be getting a full headlining set from the Because The Internet rapper. Instead, they got an hour and a half of jokes and music from Gambino’s friends in Royalty, while Glover played with turntables at the back of the stage. Although he eventually sensed the worsening vibe in the room and attempted to get them back on his side by taking the mic, it was too late, and the performers were driven from the stage by a crowd that “chanted obscenities and heckled.”
It’s pretty clear some severe miscommunication happened between Gambino, The Cambridge Hotel, and event promoter Big Apachee; a very similar set, billed as “Royalty (DJ set) feat Childish Gambino, Steve G the Prince & Jo Swank,” apparently went off without a hitch earlier this week in Sydney. In the sort of music-venue finger-pointing you usually only see in minor league baseball teams angry at Corey Feldman, both The Cambridge Hotel and Big Apachee have dumped blame for the confusion solely at Childish Gambino’s feet, posting on Facebook that they were fully expecting an “intimate” headlining set from Glover (and claim that their contract made no mention of a DJ set):
Glover, meanwhile, is touring Australia as part of the lead-up to headlining the Listen Out festival this weekend in Sydney, and clearly expected these smaller shows (including one tonight in Canberra, which has since been canceled) to be more low-key and loose. Somewhere, some wires got crossed, because the show Childish Gambino thought he was being paid to deliver was nothing like the one the audience (or the venue) expected they would get.
Fans, of course, are demanding refunds, in the standard recourse of angry concert-goers everywhere; it’s not clear if said returns will be forthcoming. Glover, meanwhile, doesn’t appear to have been too fazed by the ordeal, appearing shortly after on Australia’s Triple J Radio to promote his Listen Out performance with a cover of Tamiah’s “So Into You.”