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. 5-Oct.
27 in Glencoe. (Aurora Penepacker) The director chose Aurora Penepacker to play Natasha because she wanted someone “who truly was able to present youth and naivete in a truly genuine way. We were looking for somebody with the voice and heart of an angel and we found her.
She’s also incredibly smart.” Penepacker added that Natasha is “a young girl who’s just discovering how complicated life and humanity can be. She comes at it with her full soul and her full self and she finds that the world and society aren’t necessarily the best place to fully expose yourself.
” Natasha is not accustomed to life in Moscow. “She’s a countess and she grew up in the Russian aristocracy,” the actor explained. “She’s as close to a fairy tale princess as you can get.
” Pierre is a longtime family friend of Natasha’s but they don’t meet in this show until the end. At that point, “he helps her to see the value in herself and the value she can bring to humanity,” Penepacker related. This is the first fully sung-through show she has been in, the actor said, noting that her character “never speaks a word.
” Penepacker is particularly enjoying working on this show because of Spelman, who she described as “the epitome of a collaborative director.” For Pierre, “First and foremost you need somebody who could navigate the score,” Spelman said. “Then you’re looking for somebody who can really show you what it is to navigate depression and despair.
It’s exciting to have an actor who understands how to portray that.” That’s Evan Tyrone Martin. Martin noted that Pierre is described in the show as “a little sad; a little soused.
I think that’s one of the most succinct ways to describe him. When we first encounter Pierre, he’s in one of the low points of his life and he’s sort of working through that as we encounter him throughout the story.” Although they don’t meet in the show until the end, Martin said, Pierre and Natasha “wind up being able to help each other in very different ways.
It becomes a beautiful story of how those people in our lives can return and change us in some way.” Martin said the challenge of this role is that “we meet Pierre in a sort of depressive state and it is hard for a fairly cheerful actor sometimes to come in and play sad for a couple hours.” The actor said that he wasn’t knowledgeable about “War and Peace” or this musical before he got the role.
That has changed. “It’s such a rich story that I had little knowledge of and I learned far more about the French Revolution and Russia in this time period and the aristocracy than I ever thought I would have to learn for just one musical,” Martin said. Myrna Petlicki is a freelance reporter for Pioneer Press.
‘Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812’ When: Sept. 5-Oct. 27 Where: Writers Theatre at Alexandra C.
and John D. Nichols Theatre, 325 Tudor Court, Glencoe Tickets: $45-$110 Information: 847-242-6000; writerstheatre.org.
