“Have you read War and Peace?” 

Leo Tolstoy’s grand story—“It is not a novel, even less is it an epic poem, and still less an historical chronicle,” the author insisted—of early 19th century Russia has a towering reputation. Its success made Tolstoy a titan of world literature and its innovations influenced all who came after it. At ~580,000 words, it’s one of the longest books ever written, more than twice the length of the longest Harry Potter novel.  The title has become synonymous for its breadth, with many a verbose writer defending the length of their work with a desperate plea to their editor with “it’s not War and Peace!” The book’s allure endures, a permanent fixture for the intrepid reader to encounter in literature programs, very ambitious book clubs, and personal reading challenges. 

Or, in the case of writer, composer and performer Dave Malloy, on a cruise ship. While supporting himself as a young theatremaker in San Francisco, Malloy would periodically work as a pianist on the high seas. On one such voyage in 2007, sailing from New York to Bermuda, the 31-year-old picked up a copy of Tolstoy’s book as a way of sustaining a long-distance relationship. He and his girlfriend would, over phone calls and emails, discuss what Malloy called “a trashy romance novel, a family drama, a hilarious farce, a military thriller, a philosophical scripture, a treatise on history, all wrapped into one giant, messy, nearly unmanageable tome.”i  

The relationship wouldn’t ultimately last, but Malloy’s fascination with the book persisted. There was one section, in particular, that he saw enormous potential in: Book Two, Part Five. “When I first read the book, this section immediately screamed out to me,” Malloy told the Village Voice in 2016. “There’s something so beautiful about watching both Natasha and Pierre have these parallel [but] very different crises. She’s a young woman having a romantic crisis and he’s a middle-aged man having an existential crisis. [The parallel] spoke to me as a [structurally] perfect musical. I almost couldn’t believe that no one had done it yet. Tolstoy had kind of done [it] for me.”ii 

Leo Tolstoy began writing War and Peace in 1863 at the age of 35. The son of a Russian noble family, he had previously published several semi-autobiographical works while in his twenties. The young author also served as an artillery officer in the Crimean War, a horrific experience that cemented in him a pacifist nature and a permanent distrust of government. He returned to Russia in 1856 a changed man from the leisure-loving aristocrat he had been before his military service. At first intending to write his next book about mid-century Russia, Tolstoy traced the roots of contemporary Russia’s problems back to the Decembrist Revolt of 1825, when liberals attempted to replace the tsar with a constitutional monarch. The uprising was easily crushed, the rebels killed or exiled, and the Tsar remained in power with even less interest in reforming Russian society. However, again, Tolstoy felt the 1825 uprising needed the context of the Napoleonic Wars that preceded it and so he finally began working on a story that began in 1805. 

The first volume of what would become War and Peace was published in serial form in 1865-66 under the title 1805, appearing in the same monthly publication as his (at the time) more famous peer Dostoevsky’s new work, Crime and Punishment. Tolstoy’s work was an instant success, and the publisher was eager for more of the story. Unsatisfied with the current draft of the full story, however, the writer spent the next three years reworking his manuscript extensively. The complete work, now titled War and Peace, eventually arrived in 1869 to universal acclaim and further success, elevating Tolstoy to the upper echelons of world literature as the Russian book was translated into other languages over the following years.  

Dave Malloy was one of those “artists with promise” prior to composing Great Comet, much like Tolstoy was before War and Peace. Having relocated to New York in 2008, the composer began to find success with off-beat works he co-created, including Beowulf: A Thousand Years of Baggage and Three Pianos, based on Schubert’s “Winterreise” song cycle. The director of the latter piece was Rachel Chavkin, with whom Malloy soon began discussing his fascination with War and Peace. He also told her about his experience visiting Moscow’s Café Margarita while on a research trip for another musical project. Inside, he found himself crammed in with other patrons, inches away from a string trio playing “Flight of the Bumblebee.” Recalling the experience to The New Yorker in 2017, Malloy remembered, “There were shakers on every table, and people were shaking along to the music and eating dumplings and drinking vodka,” he recalled. “And that night, at that place, I was, like, Oh, this is how ‘Comet’ should work.”iii 

Malloy became an artist in residence with the nonprofit theatre Ars Nova in 2011 and pitched his idea of an operatic play based on War and Peace. He wanted Chavkin to direct the piece and they wanted to transform Ars Nova’s theatre space into a Russian cabaret like the one he had visited in Moscow, with musicians throughout and free vodka and pierogis being served. “They didn’t shoot it down,” Malloy recalled proudly.iv  

Musically, Malloy wanted his songs to embody what he calls “Tolstoy’s all-encompassing vision of humanity, celebrating everyone from the most humble troika driver to the Tsar and Napoleon. Taking that holistic view of humanity as a cue, the score pulls from a wide range of genres, from Russian ballet and opera to golden age musical theater to contemporary indie rock and electronica, each genre suggested by a specific character or scene.” An incomplete list of musicians who influenced Malloy when writing Great Comet, he shared, were “Björk, Prince, Tom Waits, Arcade Fire, Tchaikovsky, and Bartok.”v 

The immersive debut of Great Comet, in an 87-seat space with the composer serving as conductor, pianist, accordion player, as well as performing the role of Pierre, stunned audiences over its 39-performance run in 2012. One of Ars Nova‘s board members eagerly stepped forward to produce a commercial run. The production was remounted twice in 2013 in a 199-seat tent that would preserve the show’s immersive atmosphere, first playing on an empty lot in Manhattan’s Meatpacking District before later relocating to Midtown on 45th Street.vi 

Just as Tolstoy continued to rework War and Peace after its initial success, Malloy and his collaborators kept aspiring for more for Great Comet. The task ahead of them was how to adapt their iconic staging to a more traditional theatrical venue without losing what made the experience of the show special. The reworked and restaged version of Great Comet premiered in 2015 at American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge, Massachusetts, a venue that with 500 seats was more than twice the size of the show’s previous home in a tent. And in October 2016, the production moved to Broadway’s Imperial Theatre, a 1200-seat venue on 45th Street, right next to the empty lot the tent-version had played two years earlier. One other significant change: Malloy was no longer playing Pierre. Grammy Award-nominee Josh Groban, who had seen the off-Broadway version of the show and raved about it, had taken over the part.vii 

The Broadway production picked up 12 Tony Award nominations, the most of any production that season, and taking home awards for Scenic Design and Lighting Design. After the Broadway production closed in 2017, additional productions around the world were planned. A Tokyo production opened in 2019, and a national tour and a West End production were in the planning stages before the Covid-19 pandemic scuttled all those plans.  

This means that the Writers Theatre production will be the first time this beloved show has ever played in the Chicagoland area. At 250 seats, the Nichols Theatre is closer in size to the off-Broadway tent than a Broadway stage. Director/Choreographer Katie Spelman and her design team have taken inspiration from the lyric in the Prologue “You are at the opera,” and designed a grand central staircase with opera box-inspired windows on the second level allowing glimpses of actors and musicians.