Anyone who thinks successful musicals can't be innovative doesn't know
Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812! In 2017, Dave Malloy's "electropop opera" based on Tolstoy's
War and Peace took Broadway by storm. The huge Imperial Theater was completely transformed for the show, so audiences found themselves in the middle of the music-making ensemble and acting orchestra. Set around 1810, the story is told irreverently and with virtuosity, and brought to the stage with such irresistible energy that Tolstoy's classic was soon out of print in New York.
Young and impulsive Natasha comes to Moscow to await her fiancé's return from the front. When she falls under the spell of the unscrupulous seducer Anatol, it is up to Pierre, a family friend, to pick up the pieces of her reputation. And this despite the fact that Pierre himself is in the midst of an existential crisis.
Bold, fearless, not shying away from genre boundaries: Malloy's Rachmaninoff musical Préludes was sold out to the rafters in Linz, and now follows with Komet, his biggest success in Europe for the first time.
