Reviews round-up of Natasha, Pierre and The Great Comet of 1812 at the Donmar Warehouse London

"This War and Peace punk folk musical is an audacious triumph"

"Based on just 70 pages of Tolstoy’s great novel, this Tony-winning creation – here in its UK premiere – is theatrical lightning in a bottle"

"You can wait years for a comet to appear and streak across the sky, and you can wait years, too, for a hit Broadway musical to arrive on these shores and leave a similarly luminous mark on the London theatre scene."

"Sheader, in his inaugural production as director, ups the ante, meeting Malloy’s delirious score with a punk vamp aesthetic, and setting the action in what much of the time resembles a tawdry Moscow nightclub. Everyone plays their part – Chumisa Dornford-May’s Natasha is giggly and girly, Jamie Muscato’s Anatole, shirt half undone, hair quiffed back, grins like a pirate and struts like a wolf, while his sister Helene (Cat Simmons) staggers about the stage in fur coat and red lippy, and not much else underneath."

"Malloy’s score is a gypsy carnival of sound, splicing together galloping drum beats, scissoring strings and frenzied accordion with the occasional injection of pummelling EDM, yet it can be delicate when it needs to be"

"Declan Bennett cuts a suitably tortured unravelling figure (although physically pretty trim), the only character in this giddy drunken circus who appears remotely serious, and who while barely present for much of the show haunts the action from the shadows."

"Infinite riches in Dave Malloy’s musical"

"It is magnificent, infinite riches in a little room. That sense of sliding scale is at the heart of Timothy Sheader’s UK premiere production, which is also his first as artistic director of the Donmar. The focus constantly moves from the ensemble to an individual, from a riotous group dance to an isolated figure singing their heart out."

"The atmosphere conjured is intense, but always lively, with jugglers juggling, and dancers whirring round in Ellen Kane’s punchy choreography. There’s nothing superfluous. Everything is concentrated on moving the story at terrific pace, while revealing the emotions propelling it. The cast is uniformly superb, singing and acting with panache and power."

"It’s a riveting journey, true to Tolstoy’s themes yet compressing his mighty thoughts into one of the best new musicals for years, both hugely entertaining and deeply intelligent."

"War and Peace the musical really works"

"It could scarcely be more unlikely. It could scarcely be more vivid. Dave Malloy’s Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812 takes a small slice, some 70 pages, of War and Peace and sets them to rock, klezmer, folk song and a few (for once, not too many) ballads. The result – aswirl with colour and movement, alive with decisive characterisation and rending story – brings strong new flavours to the stage."

"Chumisa Dornford-May – megawatt voice and smile bursting from her sugary pink flounced frock – is beautifully balanced by the assurance of Maimuna Memon as her cousin Sonia, resolute in Dr Martens. Crumpled and yearning, Declan Bennett’s fine, complicated Pierre circles the action, looking up at the stars."

"It teems with rarities."

"Terrific riff on Tolstoy"

"The singing blows the roof off in this magnificently fun production of Dave Malloy’s musical, based on a section of War and Peace"

"Tim Sheader directs this dynamic new production, which has stratospheric levels of energy. It contains all the promise of a new Hamilton or Six in the early scenes as history and high literature are mashed up with club beats, Dr Martens and lashings of irony. That potential is only partly fulfilled because the show is held back by its own polished larkiness though it is hugely and amusingly original all the same."

"It’s magnificently fun, though it stays too long in an emotionally distant, arch vein, without bringing quite enough depth."

"The singing blows the roof off, with one glittering voice after another; Bennett saturates songs – such as Dust and Ashes – with feeling, as does Natasha’s friend Sonya (Maimuna Memon, gorgeously rich voice) while Dornford-May is a powerhouse in No One Else."

"Finally making its UK debut, Dave Malloy’s musical ‘War & Peace’ adaptation is an idiosyncratic wonder"

"... Malloy uses a remarkable number of devices both lyrical and musical to depict a chaotic time in the lives of two people who think they understand their places in the world, but absolutely don’t."

"That this all adds up to one of the great musicals of our day is testament to Malloy. He is responsible for the music, lyrics, book and orchestrations and even starred as Pierre at points of the original production’s journey"

"The original production made Malloy’s career and that of his director Rachel Chavkin, whose Hadestown has been sitting pretty in the West End since February. Sheader’s is an icier, harder take, with the Donmar turned into a Berghaim-ish industrial nightclub"

"Chumisa Dornford-May is superb as the young Natasha – burning with the fire and beauty of youth, theoretically obnoxious but instead gorgeously uncynical."

"I thought Bennett was just okay as Pierre. It’s a peculiar role – a sadsack who stays at home for most of the story – but his take just felt too low key and self effacing to really compete with the flashier turns and the superlative Dornford-May."

"... it is remarkable, a musical like no other, and its faults are a byproduct of what makes it great – a white-hot chunk of the soul of one of the greatest novels ever written, burning incandescent through the stage."

"Jaw-dropping performances"

"Intoxicating, eclectic musical about a young countess’ seduction and ruin at the hands of morally bankrupt 19th-century Muscovite aristocracy"

"Timothy Sheader’s production, his Donmar directorial debut as the theatre’s new artist director, echoes the eclecticism of Malloy’s music and orchestration, creating a Moscow that feels suspended between Middle-American suburbs and Berlin sex dungeons."

"Most notable, though, are the jaw-dropping performances from an energetic and passionate ensemble. Chumisa Dornford-May as Countess Natasha is superb... There are also truly spellbinding solos from Cat Simmons as Helene Kuragina Bezukhova and Maimuna Memon as Sonya Rostova."

"With a few notable exceptions, the male leads feel neither rough and rowdy enough, nor refined enough. On occasion, they are overpowered by the orchestration."

"Larger-than-life Tolstoy rock opera gets intimate"

"After a decade of anticipation, the much talked-about musical arrives in London"

"Sparkling and strange, Dave Malloy’s EDM-fuelled rock opera is a thing to marvel at – and keen observers have been waiting for it to blaze across London’s dark skies for quite some time... Now, it’s lighting up Donmar Theatre, in an intimate reimagining that lays bare its heart – but also its flaws."

"Malloy’s almost entirely sung-through musical is a masterclass in prosody, with its often-thin lyrics given emotional heft and depth by orchestration choices, which elicit their meaning."

"Where so many West End musicals serve up a pappy, poppy sonic menu, Malloy’s music is an exhilaratingly rich and chewy blend of Russian sacred music, EDM and indie rock."

"It’s a stonkingly good score, complex without sacrificing its catchiness or ability to clutch at your heart and throat."

"Sheader’s production excels in its party scenes, creating gleefully queer, ludicrously costumed and entirely modern-feeling swirls of desire and disinhibition – so it’s a shame that the story that doesn’t fully grip you in the same way, held back by its many overly expository moments"

"... this is musical theatre that feels like an event, rare and thrilling to witness. Certainly, it deserves to burn bright in the West End for years to come."

"A hipster War and Peace"

"The theatricality of Dave Malloy’s inventive retelling is dazzling at the Donmar Warehouse, but it doesn’t reach the emotional depths of Tolstoy’s classic"

"Graphic novels are all the rage right now, and that, in a way, is what you get in Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812 — the composer Dave Malloy’s inventive, hipster take onWar and Peace. There’s so much to enjoy in the stripped-down production from the Donmar’s new artistic director, Tim Sheader — the performances are superb, the lyrics are playful and provocative and Evie Gurney’s costumes deliver a fetching mix of streetwise retro chic — that you can understand why the show took Broadway by storm in 2016 after starting its journey in a small theatre in Hell’s Kitchen. It speaks in a language that the new singer-songwriter generation will instantly understand. But if its sheer theatricality is never less than dazzling, the relentlessly quirky tone (shades of Woody Allen’s nimble parody of Tolstoy in Love and Death) kept me at a distance from the characters. I laughed, I grinned, but I never really felt inclined to shed a tear."

"Exciting, audacious and infuriating"

"Based on 70 pages of Tolstoy’s War and Peace, this is maddening and brilliant in equal measure"
"This is the first show new Donmar boss Timothy Sheader has ever directed here, and I spent half of its brisk 140-minute runtime applauding the brio with which he’s chosen to make his mark, and the other half smacking my forehead about how mad the whole thing is."

"Compared to Tolstoy’s grand sweep of history, though, this feels like an arch concept album about amoral, drunk brats with too much entitlement and eyeliner. Warped and Pissed, if you like. But what’s truly maddening is how exciting and how good so much of it is. The score is full of verve and surprise. The song Charming, powerfully rendered by the aforementioned sister (Cat Simmons) is a banger with echoes of Lady Marmalade."

"Maybe there’s a wider lesson here. Don’t try and do every mad idea that occurs to you. Work out what works. Ditch the rest."

"Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of Who Knows When"

"Dave Malloy’s musical, which was a hit in New York, comes to London in an antirealist staging that loses the 1812 setting and some emotional punch."

"This London revival, directed by Tim Sheader and running at the Donmar Warehouse through Feb. 8, 2025, is rendered in an offbeat, neon grunge aesthetic and wreaks playful havoc on our expectations — with mixed results."

"The production’s visual landscape makes few concessions to realism. A couple of dresses nod vaguely to period style, but the ensemble is mostly in burlesque contemporary attire"

"Dornford-May is a convincing ingénue, by turns goofily girlish and stubbornly credulous. In his spectacles and leather jacket, Bennett’s Pierre comes across like a beleaguered sociology lecturer: kind, but somewhat lost. Muscato’s Anatole, in heavy eyeliner and open-neck shirt, looks and moves like the frontman of a 1980s indie band — an impression reinforced by his Morrissey-esque crooning. Some of the casting is provocatively counterintuitive."

"Though agreeably entertaining, “Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812” has a register problem: The show’s tone of tongue-in-cheek pastiche and its antirealist staging work against its emotional purchase, so that, despite the performers’ best efforts, the audience is never truly swept away in the characters’ travails."