Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812

by Dave Malloy, Rachel Chavkin (Contributor)

From the celebrated and award winning composer, Dave Malloy comes Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812, an electropop opera based on a scandalous slice of Leo Tolstoy’s War & Peace. Young and impulsive, Natasha Rostova arrives in Moscow to await the return of her fiancé from the front lines. When she falls under the spell of the roguish Anatole, it is up to Pierre, a family friend in the middle of an existential crisis, to pick up the pieces of her shattered reputation. Following a critically acclaimed premiere at Ars Nova in New York City, and a subsequent Off Broadway transfer, this award winning musical expands the possibilities for this genre with its daring score and bold storytelling.

Genres: Plays

110 pages, Paperback

Published July 7, 2017

About the author

Dave Malloy is a composer/writer/performer/sound designer. He has written the music for eight musicals, including Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812, an electropop opera based on War & Peace. Comet premiered at Ars Nova in the fall of 2012 before transferring Off-Broadway to Kazino, a Russian supper club built specially for the show; the show won multiple awards, including the Richard Rodgers Award and an OBIE. He is also one of the co-creators/performers of Three Pianos, a drunken romp through Schubert’s Winterreise that won an OBIE in 2010. Other musicals include Black Wizard / Blue Wizard, Beowulf – A Thousand Years of Baggage (2011 Edinburgh Herald Angel, 2008 Glickman Award), Beardo, Sandwich, and Clown Bible. He has won a Jonathan Larson Grant, an ASCAP New Horizons Award, and a NEA/TCG Grant for Theatre Designers; has been a Guest Professor in devised music theater at Princeton and Vassar Universities, and a Resident Artist at Ars Nova and Sundance's Ucross Foundation; and is the composer for Banana Bag & Bodice. He lives in Brooklyn.

Reviews

[Aaron Thomas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yeah... this is amazing.

[Abby Filsinger · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very fun to read this amazing show and see lyrics I might have missed as well as read the Russian and French used in the musical. Glad this exists since the show no longer does. Highly recommend.

[Scott Lee · Rating 3 out of 5]

As far as creative story-telling and use of music this is stupendous. For originality in structure, etc. this book and its music deserve every bit of the rave reviews they've received.

This was created from a fragment of War and Peace though, and to me, it lacks in that it feels like exactly that--a fragment. It doesn't feel like a full narrative. There is essentially a plot, but the piece is named Natasha, Pierre, & the Great Comet of 1812, and Pierre barely figures. His appearances constantly appeal to larger plots not touched on by the story. Every time he appears it points outward away from the central Natasha/Anatole plot and the attempts to use those outward pointing bits to direct the reader/audience to larger ideas/themes just didn't work for me.

[Alexis · Rating 5 out of 5]

I adore it. I adore it. I absolutely adore it.

I've seen it several times and listened to it even more. I just wanted to have a copy to highlight my favorite parts. I highlighted so much. It's a gorgeous show with fantastic characters and lyrics beyond belief. It shouldn't work, but it does so well. I don't know how it would work just to read if you weren't familiar with the sound. I would listen to it first.

I literally read War & Peace because of this.

[sydnee · Rating 4 out of 5]

absolutely insane reading this alongside war and peace - the amount of direct quotes, most of the musical being pulled from a straight 70 pages? wild. and really interesting musical structure and book. I definitely think more wealth is added to the story and narrative since I’ve read (am reading?) the book and deeply understand these characters and their relationships - great comet is simply a snippet of a 1400 page book.

[Venneh · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of my favorite obscure musicals - it adapts a book of War and Peace into a musical, and it's willing to laugh at itself a lot (cause it's a complicated Russian novel/everyone's got nine different names!), and is almost entirely sung through. If you can find the recording with Denee Barton, listen to it alongside this play copy.

[Alexander · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great to read along with listening as this really helped understand the really well-crafted lyrics especially with all the Russian slipped into the songs. This opera is truly a fantastic tale.

[Jude Williams · Rating 5 out of 5]

It sounds like an awful idea, but it’s genuinely one of the best examples of modern theatre I can think of.

[jojo]

i don't think i cared about anything more as a wee lad than when this was robbed at the Tonys

[Bia · Rating 5 out of 5]

we live to love another day

lindo lindo! dust and ashes pra mim sempre será transcendental

[Nicole Hassenstab · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of my favorite musicals of all time so of course I had to read the book of the show. 10/10 love it even more now.

[Ilyse · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautifully written. Can’t wait to choreograph the BoCo kids.

[Kylie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812 is a wonderfully inventive and beautifully rich musical. I think the theatre world would be significantly better if more shows were like Natasha, Pierre.

If you, like myself, were unable to see the stage production, I highly recommend the annotated version within "the journey of a new musical to Broadway" version. The additional photos and commentary on musical and acting choices really help bring to life an unusual staged and difficult to imagine show.