Review Roundup: Broadway-Bound NATASHA, PIERRE AND THE GREAT COMET OF 1812 Opens at the A.R.T.

As BroadwayWorld previously reported, Grammy-nominated multi-platinum recording artist Josh Groban will soon make his long-awaited Broadway debut as 'Pierre' in NATASHA, PIERRE & THE GREAT COMET OF 1812 on Broadway next Fall.

THE GREAT COMET was originally commissioned and developed at Ars Nova in NYC where it had its world premiere in the fall of 2012, and was soon-after transferred to a custom-built venue in the Meatpacking District for the summer of 2013. The show became a sensation and the entire venue was transferred to the Theater District where it continued its run into the spring of 2014.

THE GREAT COMET is currently playing a limited engagement (must end January 3, 2016) at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, where its innovative design has been expanded to bring the show's signature intimate staging to a traditional proscenium-style theatre.

Let's see what the critics had to say...

Jeremy D. Goodwin, Boston Globe: Even if its first act takes detours into narrative cul de sacs (like a showpiece featuring the decrepit old prince Bolkonsky, never to be heard from again), the whole business is still great fun from the beginning. This is an immersive show, you see, and the audience experience is altered from first arrival at the American Repertory Theater's Loeb Drama Center, which is dressed to evoke an earlier incarnation of "Great Comet" in a tented pop-up venue in New York. A makeshift box office is set up in the entrance lobby, while the hallways inside are draped with plastic tarps, affecting the hasty grime of a site-specific show. Plywood boards are plastered with Russian-language advertisements.

Alicia Blaisdell-Bannon, Cape Cod Times: In addition to the whole acting thing, they have to dance, zoom around a multi-tiered stage/cabaret, interact with the audience, play instruments and, in some cases, serve food. And, oh yes, they have to sing "War and Peace." For those of us who could never manage to actually read "War and Peace" (I tried. Four times.), the idea of singing the text from a 70-page section of the Russian masterpiece is mind-blowing. But a lot about this crazy operatic production at the American Repertory Theater is mind-blowing.

Carolyn Clay, The Artery: The multi-talented Malloy has described his goal as less commenting on Tolstoy's novel as putting it (or this small part of it) onstage with all its tempestuous sentiment and questing morality intact. True to that intention, the theater piece never winks at itself. It is great, delirious fun that at once brings a tear to the eye and a thrill to the senses. I say just go ahead and retitle the piece "Natasha, Pierre and the Great Musical of 2015."

Jan Nargi, BroadwayWorld.com: If the thought of seeing a contemporary opera based on Tolstoy's War and Peace sends Siberian shivers down your spine, fear not. All that Russian angst and all those convoluted relationships between "people with nine different names" are brought forth with ingenious musical clarity in NATASHA, PIERRE AND THE GREAT COMET OF 1812. Thanks to the brilliant sung-through score by Dave Malloy, the ingenious staging by director Rachel Chavkin, a sensational design team that blends Mother Russia with contemporary punk, and a troupe of 24 actors and 10 musicians who fill every corner of the A.R.T. with magic, this remarkable electropop opera fuses Old World melodrama with a modern-day edge to deliver a passionate love story for the ages.

Photo Credit: Gretjen Helene Photography

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