Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812, review: Larger-than-life Tolstoy rock opera gets intimate

Sparkling and strange, Dave Malloy’s EDM-fuelled rock opera is a thing to marvel at – and keen observers have been waiting for it to blaze across London’s dark skies for quite some time. Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812 began life in a small New York non-profit theatre a decade ago, staged as a wild immersive party by Rachel Chavkin. Then it soared to Broadway, winning a fan base that was devastated by its premature closure. Now, it’s lighting up Donmar Warehouse, in an intimate reimagining that lays bare its heart – but also its flaws.

Lightbulbs flicker in front of each seat in the audience, as the cast open with a prologue that’s a musical word-of-warning: “Read the programme”, they chant while introducing characters from part eight of Tolstoy’s famously mammoth novel War and Peace with the simplicity of kids singing round a campfire. Such a warning isn’t necessary. It’s marvellously clear in the hands of new Donmar artistic director Timothy Sheader, who previously spent 17 years turning Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre into a musical theatre powerhouse.

If you’re vainly searching your memory for an inkling of Tolstoy’s story, here goes: famed for her beauty, the titular Natasha (Chumisa Dornford-May) and her friend Sonya (Maimuna Memon) arrive in Moscow for a dose of cultural sophistication while they wait for their husbands-to-be to return from the war. Depressed, cuckolded Pierre (Declan Bennett) keeps an eye on them, but he can’t protect Natasha from his ne’er-do-well brother Anatole (Jamie Muscato), who bombards her with attention and drags her into Moscow’s sordid, adulterous underbelly.

Malloy’s almost entirely sung-through musical is a masterclass in prosody, with its often-thin lyrics given emotional heft and depth by orchestration choices, which elicit their meaning. When Natasha has a painfully awkward meeting with her betrothed’s disapproving sister, their “constrained and strained” interaction becomes a discordant feline screech. There’s no such discomfort when Anatole corners her at the opera, with martial drums beating like her pounding heart as he stages a military coup on her virtue.

Where so many West End musicals serve up a pappy, poppy sonic menu, Malloy’s music is an exhilaratingly rich and chewy blend of Russian sacred music, EDM and indie rock. And here, Sheader has assembled a brilliant crew of singers to match it. Dornford-Mays’s vocals suit this sweet ingenue without feeling sickly, bringing heartbreaking poignancy to torch song “No One Else”. Singer-songwriter Bennett has a rough-edged beauty as weary Pierre, bringing the house down with the self-loathing ballad “Dust and Ashes”. Memon shines most of all, lending an edge of open-throated Slavic white voice to a scene at the opera, and a compellingly husky note of hard-won wisdom to “Sonya Alone”. It’s a stonkingly good score, complex without sacrificing its catchiness or ability to clutch at your heart and throat.

Sheader’s production excels in its party scenes, creating gleefully queer, ludicrously costumed and entirely modern-feeling swirls of desire and disinhibition – so it’s a shame that the story doesn’t fully grip you in the same way, held back by its many overly expository moments (we surely don’t need a full song explaining that people used to write letters) and silences at critical moments – we don’t quite feel the full weight of why Natasha’s actions are so scandalous, in a society where marriage looks like an outdated formality. Natasha is also aged down here, singing while sprawled across a giant pink teddy, while Pierre is aged up – adding a discomfiting and underexplored feel to their bond.

Even so, this is musical theatre that feels like an event, rare and thrilling to witness. Certainly, it deserves to burn bright in the West End for years to come.

‘Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812’ is on at Donmar Warehouse until 8 February 2025; more information and tickets here.