Not to boast, but I saw the original US production of Dave Malloy’s Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812 in a big circus tent in Manhattan and can confirm it was sick. Why it didn’t make it out here I don’t know, but its long-awaited UK premiere has given incoming Donmar boss Tim Sheader one hell of an opportunity for his directorial debut here.
It’s an adaptation of a relatively brief chunk of Tolstoy’s War & Peace. And despite considerable artistic license, the musical’s story is defined by the eccentric limitations that only using around 70 pages of the novel imposes.
You think it’s going to be a love story about Tolstoy’s iconic characters Natasha Rostova and Pierre Bezukhov? Nuh-uh. Those who have completed the gargantuan tome will know that naive beauty Natasha and world-weary nerd Pierre do get together in the end. But only years after the events depicted here. Indeed, the duo only share a single scene in the musical, which is gorgeously freighted with potential, but nonetheless closes The Great Comet without much being resolved.
Instead Malloy uses a remarkable number of devices both lyrical and musical to depict a chaotic time in the lives of two people who think they understand their places in the world, but absolutely don’t. The engine of the plot is Natasha’s move to Moscow and her seduction away from absent fiancee Andrey by the caddish Anatole. Pierre, meanwhile, bumbles about feeling sorry for himself over his shitty marriage to Anatole’s cruel sister Hélène, drinks a lot of vodka, gets into a duel that he inexplicably wins… and that’s kind of it.
That this all adds up to one of the great musicals of our day is testament to Malloy. He is responsible for the music, lyrics, book and orchestrations and even starred as Pierre at points of the original production’s journey from indie obscurity in 2012 to a full-fledged Broadway run in 2016 (to be fair Tolstoy deserves some credit too).
Although Malloy’s biggest success here has been with the National Theatre’s The Witches, that was an altogether less idiosyncratic affair than The Great Comet, which is musically a heady brew running the gamut from indie folk to pounding electro to surging polka stomp. Lyrically it blends narrative songs with lyrics sourced from Tolstoy with much wryer, more modern numbers: most notably the gloriously droll opener Prologue, in which the sprawling cast of characters is introduced with the disclaimer ‘it’s a complicated Russian novel/everyone’s got nine different names/so look it up in your programme’.
The original production made Malloy’s career and that of his director Rachel Chavkin, whose Hadestown has been sitting pretty in the West End since February. Sheader’s is an icier, harder take, with the Donmar turned into a Berghaim-ish industrial nightclub, the letters at the back of Leslie Travers’s set spelling out ‘Moscow’ (actually they say Mscow, with the huge ceiling mounted lighting ring presumably representing the first ‘o’). We could be in early nineteenth century Russia with Napoleon on the horizon, we could be in an intimidating modern club called Moscow; we are on some level in both. It’s an ominous backdrop, that conveys something of its two leads’ turmoil. They should both be happy. But they’re not. Moscow should be a joyful place. But it isn’t.
Chumisa Dornford-May is superb as the young Natasha – burning with the fire and beauty of youth, theoretically obnoxious but instead gorgeously uncynical. Her pure, possibly misguided love for the absent Andrey is rocked first by the behaviour of his batshit father Prince Bolkonsky (Eugene McCoy) and haughty sister Mary (Chloe Saracco), and then by her crush on dishy bounder Anatole (Jamie Muscato, hot in a late ’00s punk pop boyband sort of way).
In one of the most heartbreaking passages, Dornford-May’s Natasha is too naive about her own feelings to recognise lust when she feels it, and rationalises that she must be in love with Anatole, and that she must do so because he is ‘kind, noble and splendid’ (spoiler: he isn’t).
Declan Bennett’s scruffy Pierre, meanwhile, tries to avoid a world that he feels has rejected him, chugging vodka and claiming he’s catching up on his reading, occasionally dragged out for the evening by his disreputable friends, with disastrous consequences.
Even though Malloy’s musical is just the tip of a huge iceberg when it comes to War & Peace, his decision to include more or less every event from the section he’s adapted means that it feels like a huge amount happens in it. Some characters only really show up for a single scene and it’s far less neat structurally than a conventional musical. Although the set barely changes, Sheader’s production is detailed and immersive: from the bulbs on our seats to a giant pink teddy falling from the rafters to a nightclub sequence that is surely influenced by the aesthetics of the new Charli XCX album (‘that’s so Brat’ I said to my friend, who looked at me like I was an idiot).
Does it live up to the years of hype? Even though it’s a UK premiere, it’s hard to view it as entirely new - much of the US buzz was based on its originality, but this is effectively a revival of a 12-year-old show.
I thought Bennett was just okay as Pierre. It’s a peculiar role – a sadsack who stays at home for most of the story – but his take just felt too low key and self effacing to really compete with the flashier turns and the superlative Dornford-May.
There’s a slightly odd balance between the songs that are just sung through dialogue (most of them) and the songs that are songs (Prologue, Letters and Balaga) – we could probably do with a few more of the latter.
And yet it is remarkable, a musical like no other, and its faults are a byproduct of what makes it great – a white-hot chunk of the soul of one of the greatest novels ever written, burning incandescent through the stage.
