Natasha is at the center of a scandal. She is in Moscow awaiting her fiancee’s return from the war when she finds a new romance in “Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812,” performed Sept. 5-Oct.
27 at Writers Theatre. Dave Malloy’s Tony Award-winning sung-through musical is based on a segment of Leo Tolstoy’s “War and Peace.” Performances are and 7:30 p.
m. Wednesdays, 7:30 p.m.
Thursdays and Fridays, 3 p.m. (except Sept.
7) and 7:30 p.m. Saturdays, and 2 and 6 p.
m. most Sundays, and 3 p.m.
Sept. 18 and Oct. 2.
“It’s one of my favorite scores of the last 25 years,” said director Katie Spelman. “I think it’s one of the best musicals we’ve been given in my lifetime. It’s really musically sophisticated and dense and very human emotions.
” Spelman also praised the narrative aspect of this show. “The actors will pull out of the scene to tell the audience something that they’re doing,” she said. “It feels very Chicago to me.
” The director noted that there’s a lot of backstory in the novel “War and Peace,” which is proving helpful to the cast. This show presents “a three-day window” into Natasha’s life, the director said. Spelman described Natasha as “idealistic, sheltered, in a way that many Tolstoy protagonists are, unable to be disingenuous.
That’s what Pierre was like when he was young.” Aurora Penepacker plays Natasha in Writers Theatre’s production of “Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812,” presented Sept. .