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Review: Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812, music and lyrics by David Malloy; directed by Rachel Chavkin; scenic design by Mimi Lien; costumes by Paloma Young; Loeb Drama Center, American Repertory Theatre; Cambridge, MA. New Years Day 2016.

The author during intermission.

What do you want to call this shebang, Mr. Malloy. An electro pop opera. How about the Bois & Grrls Kick Tolstoy’s Can all over the Place Musical. The press will never go for it. What about Vodkalicious, then? I need to start off the Year of the Monkey on the right note, with Zany Pizzazz, as I haven’t posted here in ages. Vodkalicious isn’t in the dictionary. But that’s what poets are for!, darling. How else do you expect me to describe your angsty burlesque tart of a nineteenth-century love story…

We were a little skeptical when the A.R.T. made us tunnel through corridors of butcher paper and oddly-placed coatracks representing what we thought were the ruins of post-Communist Russia. So we flapped with flabbergast to discover ourselves in this chic supper club with 19th century taste arranged by Gertrude Stein on the cycloramic red velvet curtains. Not Stein, you doofus. Mimi Lien. Yes, Mimi Lien. It’s just…it’s just so hard when everyone thinks you’re all wallflowers on wall paper made of rice paper, and someone like Lien comes along with this extraordinary sense for space and spectacle and renews your faith in humanity.

Scenic designer Mimi Lien won a 2015 Genius Grant on the strength of her innovative solutions for various productions on the Off-Broadway circuit. For Natasha, she promoted the lowly pawn of armrests into the burlesque queen of catwalks.“I noticed that when people sit in booths, there’s often this flat area behind them at shoulder level, and I went, ‘Aha!’” At the Loeb Drama Center, home of the American Repertory Theatre, here in Cambridge, Mass, she offset the gap between stage and seating by tiering the stage to mirror the seats at the back.

For Natasha, scenic designer Mimi Lien promoted the lowly pawn of armrests into the burlesque queen of catwalks.

We were lucky to score seats on the stage, which meant they seated us at tables in alcoves (16-20 person occupancy) spaced between instrumental combos that made up the live orchestra. On occasion, the actors would break from the action and play waitstaff serving us Russian Happy Meals of pierogis (potato dumplings), love letters to read, and toy maracas to shake during the infectious choruses (the maracas were in the shape of Ukranian easter eggs or pysanky). And when they returned to the stage, which was a meandering network of catwalks, we would crane our necks like giraffes to catch the actors huff and puff up and down and all around the inverted ziggurat. It was like being an extra in a music video springing forth from a half open Escheresque pop up book.

We were all on the verge of our seats when the conductor/DJ throws the opening downbeat and a jaunty brindisi or drinking song puts at ease by introducing us to all the characters  They point us to the illustrated family tree in the program if we get lost since “it’s a complicated Russian novel, everyone’s got nine different names,” but the catchy song drills the character profiles in our minds, before truncating them to cutesy catchphrases for the sake of economy. Take it away original NY cast:

“Prologue”: “Dolokhov is fierce but not too important” / “Helene is a slut” / “Anatole is hot” / “Natasha is young / [and best of all] “Andrei is not here”!

The story revolves around the inexperienced heroine Natasha who travels to the big city when her betrothed Andrei goes off to war. She’s young and horny and falls in love with the hot hedonist Anatole who’s bad news, but she can’t be blamed, having been cooped up like a country chicken for so long, even slutty Helene says so.

Natasha bares her black arms before a mirror while singing about her fair skin like a Disney princess, but finds herself on the other side of a showdown with the family of the betrothed before the prospective sister-in-law comes to her senses that her rapey father is the evil one. (The most evil thing about him is a grody rastafarian Mozart wig and the shiver-me-timbers acting).

The goody two shoes and the voice of reason, Sonya lets Natasha know that hot people are usually bad news, but of course Natasha won’t be convinced because a hot guy went in for the jugular kiss, and that sometimes is an irresistable turn on if you haven’t yet learned about rapists. But you can’t blame her when even the wooden tables want some of the action: there is some serious eye-fucking between Anatole and Helene (who are sibling!) and Dolokhov (his gonna-drink-tonight bearded hipster bro who’s “fierce, but not too important”!). Of course, Sonya’s hurt, but she just gives Natasha her love space. Can her relationship with either man be repaired, or is there a third way outside of Andre and Anatole.

I love the people at A.R.T. when they pull stunts like this. Lucas Steele is one Hot Comet of 2012, but they gave him the baby-dyke-from-the-back treatment and blocked his beautiful face to emphasize the radiance of Denée Benton. Some marketeer deserves a gift basket for giving us our recommended daily amount of Vitamin C.

Although the romantic leads wear nineteenth century toggery, you can sniff the delicious scent of the Gurlesque all over this production. It was as if Costume Designer Paloma Young had went to some Russian village straight out of Stravinsky and gave the entire town the riot grrl editorial. The chorus of backup dancers were black and white Britney (and Whitney) Spearskayas, in studded chokers, knee high socks, and peasant blouses tied bikini style. Less imagination went in the costuming of their boyfriends punked out as club kids whose hulking arms, newsy caps, and acid wash purple jeans made them look like waifs from an Alexander McQueen show. I kid cause I love.

It was as if Costume Designer Paloma Young had went to some Russian village straight out of Stravinsky and gave the entire town the riot grrl editorial

The burlesque element is distributed across the cast rather than being localized in a single impersonator. There’s no one musical playbook, in other words, by which the actors abide. I imagine the score giving dynamic markings like Salonga up this passage or McLaughlan this solo up. Denée Benton played the role of Natasha to a tee with the honeyed innocence of the animated ingenue. Besties Sonya (Brittain Ashford) and Pierre (Scott Stangland) do proud the stuttering indie songstress and drunken Piano Man. Hot Anatole (Lucas Steele) channels the one interesting member of the boyband who hits the stratospheric C# with a little Bowie. Take away the cigarette holder from Cruella de Ville and you have the gesticulating grande dame of Moscow, Marya. But the character who gave me the most life was slutty cosmopolitan Helene (Lilli Cooper), who steals the show with the kicky and sultry number “Charming”: “(You are such a lovely thing, oh where you have you been. “It’s such a shame to bury pearls in the country // charmante, charmante”).” Take it away Lucille Doll, Amber Gray, from the original Off-Broadway cast.

As you can see, this is no song for amateurs. Ms. Gray is serving the cutesy dangerousness of Eartha Kitt supported by the gravelly growl of Shady Marmalade, Patti Labelle. Lilli Cooper, the actress cast for the A.R.T. production, really sold the voluptuous solidity and conniving that character demands. Cooper dragged her delivery with slinky style, hitting her notes without scooping or straining. She was my favorite performer of the night.

Natasha is a musical that pokes good-natured fun at the conventions of nineteenth century noveland the pastimtes of a prior age when cell phones and email didn’t consume our lives, leading to a score chock with dramatic irony, as in “Letters.”

In nineteenth century Russia we write letters we write letters we put down in writing what is happening in our mind Once it’s on the paper we feel better, we feel better. It’s just like some clarity when the letter’s done and signed.

People in novels drink and write letters compulsively and are ecstatic if they receive a reply in two months time. Compare that to the feisty texter who throws a fit if he or she doesn’t get a reply in less than two minutes.

But as characters in novels, they sing parts that resemble the author, lapsing into third person and achieving in the process ironic distance from their muddle of feelings towards each other. It was a great idea but for the flagging execution at the end. I wanted duets, trios, and choruses interweaving at strange angles with one another and generating the impossible yearning and unresolved tensions, not vocal percussion for an acapella group at 3rds and 6ths, which doesn’t cut it in this context, but that’s a specialist’s gripe.

The Great Comet signals that kind of transfigurative experience that comes once in a blue moon. As the room darkens for the denouement, the chandeliers gleam with their full potential to create a moment. Like the characters, we’ve just watched our own delusions of pride and insignificance play out. The characters of the show feel grateful for the comet as we feel grateful for the theatre for giving us something to talk about on the way home, as the warmth of intimacy intensifies and makes the darkness vanish.

Interview with Mimi Lien and set designs for Ars Nova Production of Natasha, by Jeremy M. Baker, “Mimi Lien creates Art with her Sets,” American Theatre, September 22, 2014.