The music, the lyrics, the book and the orchestrations are all by Dave Malloy. The book is based on 70 pages in Leo Tolstoy’s massive War and Peace, which he first read when he was 30 and thought a perfect story for a musical. It premiered off-Broadway in 2012, then transferred to Boadway, ran for nearly a year, and was nominated for many awards.
It has taken a long time to get to London but now that it is here, hopefully it will be here for some time. It gets a terrific performance from a cast with strong voices and strong personalities.
Natasha (Chumisa Dorrnford-May) is engaged to Prince Andrey (Andrew Berlin) who is away at the Napoleonic wars. She is seduced by Anatole (Jamie Muscato), a notorious womaniser.
Pierre (Declan Bennett), in a loveless marriage to Helene (Cat Simmons), feels he has wasted his life. Helene, meanwhile, flirts with Dolokhov (Daniel Krikler), who ends up fighting a duel with Pierre.
Molloy has described his musical, which is entirely sung through, bar one line of spoken dialogue, as an electropop opera. I much enjoyed the variety of the music and the orchestrations as well as the powerhouse singing.
The show is extremely well directed by Tim Sheader and cleverly choreographed by Ellen Kane. The costumes by Evie Gurney are quite extraordinary. The production has such vigour and it looks really good in the Donmar.
Every seat has its individual electric lightbulb, which immediately raises expectations. A huge circle of lights above the cast occasionally descends to effectively encapsulate them.
Musically, vocally and visually, Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812 is something new and something special, a collector’s item, which I hope will transfer to the West End.
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