{"id":20445,"date":"2025-07-24T12:01:06","date_gmt":"2025-07-24T12:01:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/20445\/"},"modified":"2025-07-24T12:01:06","modified_gmt":"2025-07-24T12:01:06","slug":"natasha-pierre-and-the-revival-of-a-lifetime-at-the-royal-alexandra-theatre","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/20445\/","title":{"rendered":"Natasha, Pierre and the revival of a lifetime at the Royal Alexandra Theatre"},"content":{"rendered":"

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

George Krissa as the seductive Anatole in Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812. The musical has soared higher, shone brighter and dreamed bigger than any might have thought possible.Dahlia Katz\/Mirvish<\/p>\n

Title: Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812<\/p>\n

Written by: Dave Malloy<\/p>\n

Performed by: Hailey Gillis, Evan Buliung, Divine Brown, George Krissa, Lawrence Libor, Marcus Nance, Heeyun Park, Andrew Penner, Louise Pitre, Vanessa Sears<\/p>\n

Directed by: Chris Abraham<\/p>\n

Company: Crow\u2019s Theatre and the Musical Stage Company, presented by Mirvish<\/p>\n

Venue: Royal Alexandra Theatre<\/p>\n

City: Toronto<\/p>\n

Year: Runs to Aug. 24, 2025<\/p>\n

Critic\u2019s Pick<\/p>\n

At the top of Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812\u2019s sumptuous set sits a glowing hoop, its shadow dark against the surrounding mirror. At various times throughout Dave Malloy\u2019s electro-pop musical, revived to perfection at the Royal Alexandra Theatre in Toronto, the orb represents the moon, the sun, the wicked fates that have allowed Moscow\u2019s glitziest youngsters to act so recklessly.<\/p>\n

But there\u2019s something special about that luminous wheel, a significance far beyond plot. If you stare at it hard enough, you might notice that it\u2019s not quite a circle, but rather a M\u00f6bius strip, a geometric phenomenon in which a surface attaches to itself via a half-twist, creating a continuous, infinite loop with only one edge. It\u2019s a shape that is both itself and something else.<\/p>\n

In a way, the incandescent M\u00f6bius strip near the highest lip of Julie Fox and Joshua Quinlan\u2019s magnificent set is the perfect stand-in for this show: a little magic, a little brainy. With that tiny revamp, what was once a disappointing light cue at the end of the musical is now a beacon of new hope for Canadian theatre \u2013 and proof of all that can happen when directors, designers and performers have a little budget, time and space to play with.<\/p>\n

The small but mighty Nova Scotia theatre putting community in the spotlight<\/a><\/p>\n

In early 2024, Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812 was the show that could not close. Week after week, the co-production between Crow\u2019s Theatre and the Musical Stage Company extended, picking up word-of-mouth acclaim throughout Toronto. <\/p>\n

I was underwhelmed by that production (at least the first time I saw it); so was former Globe theatre critic J. Kelly Nestruck<\/a>. Chris Abraham\u2019s direction felt frantic and manic, as if one wrong step might send the whole affair into disarray, and Ray Hogg\u2019s equally frenetic choreography made Crow\u2019s Guloien Theatre feel surprisingly cramped, despite (or perhaps because of) the seemingly boundless energy of the performers onstage.<\/p>\n

The Mirvish revival, meanwhile, is poised, polished and thoughtful, but doesn\u2019t lose the air of debauchery that in 2024 made Malloy\u2019s masterwork feel like the party of the year (its flaws notwithstanding). In the far more spacious Royal Alexandra Theatre, Abraham has expanded the production \u2013 complete with a larger, shockingly tireless ensemble \u2013 but infused it with moments of stillness that complement the controlled chaos of Malloy\u2019s book and score.<\/p>\n

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

Divine Brown as Anatole’s scheming sister H\u00e9l\u00e8ne in Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812.Dahlia Katz\/Mirvish<\/p>\n

Plot-wise, it\u2019s the same Comet it ever was, an 80-page sliver of War and Peace in which surprisingly little happens \u2013 the show is far more about how things feel than what things do. Natasha (Hailey Gillis) is a young woman set to marry Andrey (Marcus Nance), a soldier away at war. When a night at the opera with cousin Sonya (Vanessa Sears) and godmother Marya (Louise Pitre) leads to a chance encounter with the seductive Anatole (George Krissa) and his scheming sister H\u00e9l\u00e8ne (Divine Brown), all hell breaks loose, and it\u2019s up to the brooding Pierre (Evan Buliung) to keep the Moscow aristocracy from collapsing in on itself like a pavlova.<\/p>\n

Gillis and Buliung, while astounding last year at Crow\u2019s, are more grounded in the larger space, their performances somehow suppler when enjoyed from a distance. Gillis\u2019s airy soprano voice floats through the theatre like a snowflake; Buliung\u2019s growl ably telegraphs Pierre\u2019s biting, scholarly despair. Their final duet, aptly called Pierre & Natasha, is quiet and devastating, effortlessly conversational and note-perfect against a simple piano underscore.<\/p>\n

Review: Gnit at the Shaw Festival is an intriguing homage to Henrik Ibsen<\/a><\/p>\n

The rest of the cast is similarly excellent here, and, for the most part, better than they were in the smaller space \u2013 Heeyun Park, who won a slate of awards last year for her work in the small role of Mary, continues to bring a surprising amount of depth and nuance to a character without all that much dialogue. Andrew Penner\u2019s Balaga, as well, is as off-the-wall as ever, with a second-act star turn that\u2019s arguably the highlight of the show.<\/p>\n

Vanessa Sears, a newcomer to the production after Camille Eanga-Selenge\u2019s departure for The Lion King, beautifully counters Gillis\u2019s Natasha, finding all the right moments to belt out Sonya\u2019s anguish before quietly reeling it back in. In addition to her clever acting choices, Sears is in fine voice \u2013 a pleasant sign of what\u2019s to come later this year when she appears in the title role of Mirvish\u2019s Canadian & Juliet.<\/p>\n

Abraham\u2019s padded ensemble, too, is up to the challenge implied by Malloy\u2019s genre-bending, operatic marathon of a show, complete with racing up the aisles of the theatre, climbing and descending a staggering number of staircases and inviting audience members to dance onstage. At times, an aisle seat on the orchestra level of the theatre feels much the same as it does during Circle of Life; while Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812 is perhaps less intimate in this staging than it was last year, it\u2019s also sharper, funnier and more tender, and with more leg room to boot.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s not much to fault within this monumental remount of the indie musical that only a year ago broke Toronto theatre. Abraham\u2019s revival had a lot to prove \u2013 Toronto has been clamouring for it since last spring \u2013 and together with Hogg, Fox, Quinlan, music director Ryan deSouza, costume designer Ming Wong, lighting designer Kimberly Purtell and sound designer Brian Kenny, the musical has soared higher, shone brighter and dreamed bigger than any (myself included) might have thought possible.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Open this photo in gallery: George Krissa as the seductive Anatole in Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":20446,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[49,48,75,2922,208],"class_list":["post-20445","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment","tag-noastack","tag-review"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20445","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20445"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20445\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20446"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20445"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20445"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20445"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}