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Natasha, Pierre, Comet 1812 REACT Part Seven (Patreon)

Published:
2025-06-09 15:00:07
Imported:
2026-06
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Content

Everyone is literally like, don't do it.

But they just DON'T CARE.

Comments

berha

What I love about watching your reactions is that not only do I get to re-live part of the joy of experiencing this show anew through you, but I also get to hear a musician articulate the technical aspects of how and why the music makes me feel the way I do. Many of my favorite musicals are by Dave Malloy, and yes, part of that is how he incorporates such a wide variety of musical influences and techniques into his shows in ways that still feel cohesive and resonant. But it's also because I often resonate with what I feel he's conveying through the music, and you provide the knowledge I don't have to understand this better. Still, it's hard for me to fully explain why I love this show so much, especially without talking about the ending. What I will say for now is that this show, like other shows by Dave that I love, have what I sense as a spiritual core to them that I resonate with. I feel this particularly with Pierre and his desire to feel awake and present - I don't think you're overthinking his comment to Anatole. I relate to Pierre to an extent for this reason, along with his addiction and escapism (the anachronistic “hours at my screen” line in his intro song really drives this home). Another thing I love about this show is how it brings the audience into the worlds that the characters are experiencing. During the Balaga (driver) song, the ensemble passes out egg shakers to the audience, meant to evoke the vibe of a small Russian club similar to one Dave himself experienced. It sweeps up the audience in the excitement that Natasha, Anatole, and company are experiencing to the point that for a moment, one can forget that all this is celebrating Natasha’s abduction, and the implications of that. (I still have my egg shaker from when I saw the show, along with a love letter that Balaga gave me during the earlier song Letters). Brittain Ashford, the actress with the unique voice who played Sonya, did not have a background in musical theatre when she first took on this role. She's an indie folk/alt rock singer/songwriter. Another thing I love about Dave Malloy, he doesn't allow a show to be limited by preconceived ideas about what a musical theatre performer should sound like. Glad to hear that you were able to appreciate her voice here. Not everyone gets it.

Lydia Brunk

I don't know if I can explain why I love this show in the eloquent way that the previous commenter did, but there are a few things that make this one of my favorite shows. First, I do love the singing (and to a lesser extent the music) - I don't have any deep understanding of musical genre or theory or anything like that, the way that you do (and that is one of the reasons that I'm really enjoying your reaction to this; to see someone analyze the show that I love so much from a pretty much entirely new lens), but I nonetheless find the songs compelling musically, and I really like the variety and expressiveness of the different vocal "styles" that really lend something to the "characterization" of each character. It was interesting to me that you remarked that some of the performers were showing off their vocal talent, and others weren't, because I can't always tell what's vocally challenging, and something like "Dust and Ashes" sounds incredible to me. No hate to Dave Malloy as Pierre, for example, but I grew to love the show listening to these OBC performers, and Josh Groban is THE middle-aged mom heartthrob for a very good reason. Denee Benton's voice and whole performance gives me that too-sweet, too-pure, and the woman who plays Sonya (I can't recall her name) sounds exactly right for someone to whom nothing but bad things ever seem to happen. I also love a sung-through musical. But the other reason I love the shows is for the very complexity that makes it hard to follow at first listen, and for its lyrics, and characterization. I always listen to a show with the lyrics up, at least the first time, so I can tell what everyone's saying. I think you mentioned in one of these reactions that once you finish a video game(?) you like to do a lot of research into, and there's so much richness to be found in this show by close reading the lyrics and by finding out more of the War & Peace context. A lot of the lyrics for this show are definitely owed to a translation of Tolstoy, but I can't credit Malloy enough for what he turned them into. I'm no expert, but I also think that the "slowness" of the plot gives the show a change to delve more deeply into what is happening. Something like "The private and intimate life of the house" so vividly and economically paints the picture of the relationship between Prince Bolkonsky and Mary and of course the music supports it in ways I don't fully understand, but I'm sure you would. When Natasha enters with "I know they'll like me; everyone has always liked me," you know SO much about her as a character. Or in the prologue, where you get that foreshadowing of the entire story when we learn that Anatole is hot, Natasha is young, and Andrey isn't here. That's the whole story, and it's not at all the whole story. (I also love the inventiveness and "weirdness" of it - without having the lyrics to read, I'm not sure whether you're hearing it, but because he's pulling from a book written in the third person, the characters are often describing what they're doing, e.g, "my cheeks are glowing from the cold / she said, gazing at Marya with kind, glittering eyes." )

Megan Rabone

I come back to this show again and again because I *always* discover something new in it, and it’s always way smarter than I am ready for