As he introduces the characters at the beginning of Nastasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812, composer Dave Malloy issues a warning:
And this is all in your program
You are at the opera
Gonna have to study up a little bit
If you wanna keep with the plot
‘Cause it’s a complicated Russian novel
Everyone’s got nine different names
So look it up in your program
We’d appreciate it, thanks a lot
Malloy extracted a 70-page section of Leo Tolstoy’s complicated 1869 Russian novel War and Peace as the basis for the musical. There’s a lot going on in the story, set in early 19th-century Moscow, even in that brief excerpt.
During the opening number at Theatre Three, where The Great Comet is making its professional North Texas premiere, the cast hands audience members a sheet of paper with a scene-by-scene synopsis and a family tree of the people they’re about to meet.
The document is helpful. So is Malloy’s approach. He works as hard at keeping things clear as he does at taking the audience on a rollercoaster ride of emotions and musical styles — Slavic folk here, electro-pop there. The 11 actors rarely stop moving around the stage, which is outfitted with four tables for audience members who want to get extra close to the action.
Beyond the admonition in “Prologue” to “study up,” Malloy describes the players in a looping chorus that reduces all of them except Pierre to a word or two:
Balaga is fun
Bolkonsky is crazy
Mary is plain
Dolokhov is fierce
Hélène is a slut
Anatole is hot
Marya is old-school
Sonya is good
Natasha is young
And Andrey isn’t here
Written in 2010, The Great Comet revolves around the title characters and their familial and societal circle.
Countess Natalya Ilyinichna Rostova, a naive young woman everyone calls Nastasha, arrives in Moscow with her cousin Sofya “Sonya” Alexandrovna Rostova. Natasha has come to await the return of her fiancé, Prince Andrey Nikolayevich Bolkonsky, who’s off fighting Napoleon. But at the opera, Natasha falls for Anatole Vasilyevich Kuragin, who plots with his friends to run off with her despite already being married.
While everyone else is out socializing, Count Pyotr “Pierre” Kirillovich Bezukhov, a longtime friend of the Rostovas described as “bewildered and awkward,” stays home reading and studying. He’s rich but unhappily married to Anatole’s sister Hélène. The other characters include Andrey’s father and sister Mary, Anatole’s friend Dolokhov and Nastasha’s godmother and protector Marya.
“I have very little memory of the actual story,” says Theatre Three artistic director Jeffrey Schmidt, who saw The Great Comet in its second iteration in a tent built for the production in Manhattan’s Meatpacking District before it moved to a conventional Broadway stage. “I just remember these virtuoso performers playing instruments, acting all over the place. Drinks were flowing. I definitely partook in that. It’s this thing that people want so much now: the experience. The storyline is secondary to why you’re there.”
The off-Broadway venue was designed as a Russian supper club, with the actors moving among the patrons. Dinner was served before the show. Bottles of vodka were for sale. In Theatre Three’s more modest setup, audience members sitting on the stage can order beverages and snacks.
But the production, which opened last Monday, still captures the immersive spirit of the original New York versions, the performers sliding between tables, sitting down to sing to the paying customers and traversing the aisles to interact with patrons in the bleacher seats. Danielle Georgiou, who choreographed the movement, including scenes where the performers dance like they’re at a contemporary nightclub, had her work cut out for her.
There’s probably never been better use of the multitiered Uptown theater. It has been transformed into a credible 19th-century Russia by Schmidt, who designed the set, filling it with chandeliers and other period touches. There are also mock flickering candles on the tables and moody lighting, creating a more visceral experience than when there’s a fourth wall firmly in place. “We’re using the entire space,” Schmidt says.
Band members are arrayed at different levels but often leave their posts to perform among the actors, several of whom wield instruments. Laura Leo Kelly, who portrays troika driver Balaga, is the main drummer, wedged next to the staircase leading to Marya’s house. Ian Ferguson, Theatre Three’s Pierre, also plays the small snare-and-high-hat kit, along with turns at the piano and on guitar and accordion.
The other accomplished singers include recent college graduates Bella Zambrano as Natasha, Laila Jalil as Sonya and Emily-Arden Seggerman as Mary, as well as Texas Christian University student Nick McGeoy as Anatole. Local theater veterans Kevin Solis, Brett Warner, Laura Lites and Sinclair Freeman round out the cast. Musical director Scott A. Eckert holds the whole thing together behind the piano.
Malloy, who originally played Pierre and has been working at the edges of American commercial theater for 20 years, has made immersive shows based on literature, along with a taste for all kinds of classical, ethnic and popular music — his trademark. One of his more recent projects was adapting the entirety of Moby Dick into a musical.
Before that, he followed up The Great Comet — the first and only of his works to make it to Broadway — with Ghost Quartet, inspired by a purposely confusing blend of Edgar Allan Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher, Thelonious Monk, Arabian Nights, the Brother Grimm, Joyce’s Ulysses, David Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust and Into the Woods. Four actors play all of the roles, including several characters named Rose and Pearl, an astronomer in a tree house and an evil, lazy bear.
It toured through Dallas in 2016 with some of the same cast from The Great Comet, including Malloy. Three years later, Ashley White directed a memorable production for her now defunct Imprint Theatreworks at the Bath House Cultural Center that put audience members on stage sitting on a variety of furniture. The performers passed out whiskey and musical instruments. Sound familiar?
Naturally, Theatre Three tapped White, who is now artistic director of Circle Theatre in Fort Worth, to direct The Great Comet. Like Schmidt, she had seen it off-Broadway and had been dying to bring it to Dallas ever since.
“I remember coming home and telling everybody about this show, how I had to direct it someday,” White says. “It not only blew my mind, but I was so immediately connected to it creatively, emotionally, aesthetically. It opened my eyes to how theater could be done in a very invigorating way. I also remember telling everybody that the perfect place for it was Theatre Three. This space is so perfectly suited to it. Somehow I’m getting the beautiful privilege of directing it. It feels surreal.”
Details
Through Dec. 29 at 2688 Laclede St., Dallas. $37-$40. Dec. 11 matinee, $20. theatre3dallas.com.
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