I had no idea Dave Malloy was capable of THIS.
I knew Malloy — the Lakewood native who penned the wildly creative and entertaining musical “Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet,” which, after its move to Broadway in 2016, was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Musical, along with myriad others — while we were students at Ohio University in Athens in the mid-1990s.
We weren’t close, but we had mutual friends, Malloy becoming tight with good pals of mine from Lakeview High School in Cortland after they arrived as freshmen when I was a sophomore.
We all hung out a handful of times over three years, and I wrote a feature about a band Malloy was in for OU’s independent student newspaper, The Post, during (best as I can recall) my senior year.
Honestly, I don’t think he and I really clicked — possibly my fault more than his — and I don’t recall that much about him. Obviously, I knew he was musical and probably(?) knew then that he planned to pursue a career in musical theater.
You know how you wish you could do even little things differently from your younger days? Having just seen Great Lakes Theater’s production of “Great Comet” at the Hanna Theatre at Playhouse Square, I wish I could go back and pick his brain about any musical-theater ideas he had then. (Based on a text exchange I had with one of those mutual friends, it sounds as though Malloy had at least the seeds for one aspect of the unconventionally staged show back in those days.)
Richard M. Parison Jr. is back at home with Great Lakes Theater
As you may have read by now, Malloy based what he has described as an “electropop opera” on a 70-page section of Russian writer Leo Tolstoy’s 1969 epic novel “War and Peace.” Even with that little source material, however, the show is plenty dense, the kind of show you know you’d get more from the second time you saw it.
With this publication already having published a review by Sheri Gross, who writes that it “not only sets the bar high for innovative, experiential storytelling but also eviscerates that bar,” I decided I wouldn’t work that hard at the end of a long work week to follow the story closely when I saw it on a recent Friday evening.
All the same, it sucked me in with its handy, character-introducing opening number, “Prologue,” and didn’t let me go until the talented cast’s final bow. (And speaking of the cast, Alex Syiek is simply sublime as Pierre, a role that earned recording artist Josh Groban a nod for the Tony for Best Actor in a Musical.)
As for Malloy, I reached out to him about interviewing him by phone for a feature on his career before “Great Comet” opened in Cleveland — which he would miss, as he is in London, seemingly for rehearsals for the upcoming production of his “Ghost Quartet” — but he politely declined.
I hope Cleveland sooner than later sees a production of another of his shows, such as “Moby-Dick,” a 2019 adaptation of the Herman Melville novel.
In the meantime, though, if I can hitch a ride with anyone to England, please let me know.
‘Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812’
A production of Great Lakes Theater, it continues through Oct. 8 at Playhouse Square’s Hanna Theatre, 14th Street and Euclid Avenue, Cleveland. For tickets, $20 to $89, call 216-241-6000 or visit greatlakestheater.org.
