Media Archive

Last fall’s most exciting sensation wasn’t a big Broadway musical but a scrappy outsider sneaking in under the radar.

I know, I know: A two-and-a-half-hour sung-through adaptation of War and Peace, performed in an immersive environment, may sound as appealing as the Great Retreat from Moscow. But Dave Malloy’s Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812 feels like a party from start to end: lively, intelligent and utterly engrossing.

There’s an air of danger to that kind of unpredictability — and how sexy is that.

But when that comet streaks through the sky at the hushed climax of the show, Pierre experiences an epiphany that had my heart leaping into my throat…

Ever get punch-drunk from a musical? A heady, intoxicating feeling that leaves you joyfully disoriented, giddy even? It’s a rare occurrence, like seeing a meteor in the night sky, but it is happily happening now at the Loeb Drama Center…

Though I’ve just begun writing this review, I am already at a loss for superlatives. NATASHA, PIERRE & THE GREAT COMET OF 1812 has to be one of the most fantastically alive and rapturous theatrical productions I’ve ever seen. 

From the moment Natasha receives an illicit love letter until Pierre’s concluding aria over a celestial wonder, “Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812” is a captivating experience…

Alchemy is afoot in ART’s current production, the much-acclaimed “Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812”. 

In “Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812,” the writer/composer/lyricist — also the musical force behind “Three Pianos” and “Beowulf — A Thousand Years of Baggage” — has turned less than a hundred pages from the middle of Tolstoy’s opus into a romantic and driving swirl of music and storytelling that is beyond exhilarating.

Lucas Steele cuts quite a dashing profile in “Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812,” the adventurous musical at the American Repertory Theater. EDGE spoke to him about playing the caddish Anatole for the third time.

Patrons strolling through the doors of the American Repertory Theater’s Loeb Drama Center may feel they’ve somehow been transported into a sumptuous 19th-century Russian supper club.