Raving About Tolstoy

 

Corey Bryant as Balaga

Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812

San Jose Playhouse

April 29, 2023

To quote that other highly unusual 2010s musical, it would have been great to be “in the room” when someone came up with the idea for Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812. “Let’s dramatize 70 pages of Tolstoy’s War and Peace using Russian folk music, musical theater ballads and electronic dance music.” Sure! Why not? A dozen 2017 Tony nominations later, it would seem that the crazy idea worked.

The other meeting must have come at San Jose Playhouse, where someone asked, “What incredibly difficult musical can we do next?” With their nicely solidifying company of talented regulars, it seems this group can pull of just about anything. The result is a dazzling and beautifuly eccentric evening of theater, full of captivating imagery and music.

Paloma Maia Aisenberg as Natasha,
Juanita Harris as Helene.

The action revolves around Natasha (Paloma Maia Aisenberg), a young noblewoman whose fiance has gone off to war. The homefront conflict appears in the form of Anatole (Jared Lee), a swaggering young man determined to capture Natasha’s heart, despite his marriage to a woman in Poland.

At first the show doesn’t seem that odd - perhaps a few rock beats here and there, or the fact that some of the actors are playing instruments. Then Princess Mary (Osher Fine) delivers a dark, comic account of dealing with her aging father (F. James Raasch), and her father’s behavior causes her to be rude to her guest, Natasha. Forced into defending their respective turfs, the two women land on long, intentional dissonances, beautiful in their bitterness. (Ah! thinks I. This composer Dave Malloy is clever.)

Almost from that point, the show goes haywire in a delicious fashion. Anatole strips off his ornate Russian uniform to reveal stylish club-wear, the men get drunk at a trendy EDM spot, and the frustrated cuckold Pierre (Stephen Guggenheim) manages to survive a duel with the assassin Dolokhov (Nicholas Rodrigues).

Speaking as a novelist, this show is frankly what Tolstoy needs. When you strip out the endless ocean of mundane details and present the bones of the story with some kick-ass music, it’s amazingly entertaining. (Seriously, I tried reading Anna Karenina once and I wanted to throw myself in front of a train.)

Stephen Guggenheim as Pierre

The heart of the show is Aisenberg, gifted with an irresistible radiance and a gorgeous voice that sounds unnervingly (and not in a bad way) like that of a Disney heroine. Natasha’s impulsive behavior - the foolishness of youth in love - is balanced by Guggenheim’s heart-rending performance as Pierre, a man lifted from a dreary, beaten-down existence by an wayward bullet.

But there are stars everywhere. Corey Bryant delivers an adrenalized show-stopper as the crazed troika driver Balaga, hired to whisk the lovers away. As Pierre’s wandering wife, Helene, Juanita Harris throws in Patti LaBelle vocal flights when she’s not playing violin or leading Natasha astray. As Sonya, Annie Hunt tugs at heartstrings with “Sonya Alone,” a desperate prayer toward saving her cousin Natasha from a bad end.

Kudos to director Scott Evan Guggenheim for weaving all these crazy threads into a unified piece, and to Shannon Guggenheim for endlessly inventive choreography. As a drummer, I got a special kick from watching Jerald Bittle navigate an incredible array of beats.

Photos by Scott Donschikowski.

Through May 28 at 3Below Theaters, 288 S. Second Street, San Jose. 408/404-7711. Sanjoseplayhouse.org.

Michael J. Vaughn is the author of 28 novels, including Mermaids’ Tears and Lavender, and two plays, Darcy LaMont and Cafe Phryque. His titles can be found on Amazon.com.