Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812 at the Donmar Warehouse – review round-up

Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812 – a musical masterpiece

Dave Malloy’s sung-through musical doesn’t take on the entirety of War and Peace. Instead, it focuses on a section, featuring Natasha’s ill-fated romance with Anatole and Pierre’s vodka-soaked search for meaning. Most critics are thoroughly impressed.

“Malloy’s gonzo, knowing, blisteringly funny and wildly creative chamber opera” imagines Tolstoy’s characters “not as solemn, dusty historic figures, but in terms we can understand”, extols Marianka Swain (LondonTheatre, ★★★★★). “They’re young, impulsive, selfish and downright horny.” And, she adds, his “magpie score brilliantly fuses Slavic folk with EDM, rock-pop, jazz and yearning ballads”.

The musical is “hugely entertaining and deeply intelligent” for Sarah Crompton (WhatsOnStage, ★★★★★), “sparkling and strange” with “a stonkingly good score” for Alice Saville (Independent, ★★★★), and “theatrical lightning in a bottle” with a “gypsy carnival of sound” for a score according to Claire Allfree (Telegraph, ★★★★★).

There are a few quibbles. Arifa Akbar (Guardian, ★★★★) objects to its “emotionally distant” attitude and Clive Davis (Times, ★★★) to its “relentlessly quirky tone”, while Saville complains of “overly expository moments”. But most critics concur with Andrzej Lukowski (TimeOut, ★★★★). This, he concludes, is “a musical like no other”.

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Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812 – a stylish staging

Timothy Sheader took over as artistic director of the Donmar Warehouse earlier this year, having run Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre since 2007, and got his tenure off to a good start with Justin Martin’s acclaimed production of Lindsey Ferrentino’s The Fear of 13. This is his directorial debut at the Seven Dials venue – and he does an excellent job.

Sheader’s staging is a “big, brash, punkishly feathered creation” full of “visual excitement” according to Akbar, while Laurie Yule (The Stage, ★★★★) admires how it “echoes the eclecticism of Malloy’s music” and features “memorable stage images”. For Davis, meanwhile, its sheer theatricality is "never less than dazzling”.

Designer Leslie Travers turns the Donmar Warehouse “into a Berghaim-ish industrial nightclub”, describes Lukowski. “We could be in early 19th-century Russia with Napoleon on the horizon. We could be in an intimidating modern club called Moscow.”

There is plenty of praise in particular for Ellen Kane’s choreography, which is “swashbuckling” and “gravity-defying” according to Yule, and for Howard Hudson’s lighting, which is “gleefully multi-hued” like “an expressive disco” according to Swain.

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Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812 – dazzling Dornford-May

The two title characters of the musical – Natasha and Pierre – are played by Chumisa Dornford-May, who has previously performed in The Phantom of the Opera, and Declan Bennett, a former member of boy band Point Break, who has subsequently carved out a career in musicals, appearing in Rent, Once, Jesus Christ Superstar and Moulin Rouge.

Dornford-May is widely praised. She is “superb as the young Natasha, burning with the fire and beauty of youth, theoretically obnoxious, but instead gorgeously uncynical”, writes Lukowski, while Allfree admires how she “gives beautiful voice to the exquisite terror of a young girl in the clutches of a predatory man”.

Bennett fares less well. He “cuts a suitably tortured unravelling figure” as Pierre according to Allfree, and is nicely “dishevelled, plaintive and ruminating” according to Akbar, but he is “too low-key and self-effacing” according to Lukowski and “neither rough and rowdy enough, nor refined enough” according to Yule.

Elsewhere, there is particular praise for Jamie Muscato, who “gives a performance of towering charisma and alarming moral vacuity” as Anatole according to Swain, and Maimuna Memon, whose is “compellingly husky” and “truly spellbinding” as Sonya, according to Saville and Yule respectively. In fact, adds Yule, there are “jaw-dropping performances” across the “energetic and passionate ensemble”.

Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812 – the verdict

Five-star reviews from LondonTheatre’s Marianka Swain, WhatsOnStage’s Sarah Crompton, the Telegraph’s Claire Allfree, and four stars from almost everyone else suggest that the Donmar Warehouse has another hit on its hands.

Dave Malloy’s wildly imaginative musical version of a chunk of Tolstoy’s War and Peace is superbly staged by Timothy Sheader and features fabulous performances from Chumisa Dornford-May, Jamie Muscato and Maimuna Memon. There are a couple of quibbles about the show’s quirky style and Declan Bennett’s lead performance, but most critics concur that Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812 was worth the wait.