Chatham Life & Style

 by Alex Riggs, staff writer

Rubenstein Arts Center at Duke University

Durham, NC

March 28 - April 7, 2024

Rating: ★★★★

Learn more at hoofnhorn.org

I rarely double dip when it comes to theatre, especially reviewing theatre. There are some shows I end up revisiting like an old book (Urinetown and Into The Woods come to mind) but one can only sit through the same stories over and over before the patterns found become obvious and the joy is gone.

Luckily for my attention span, Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812 is recent and culty enough (and tricky to pull off) that revisiting it live is an absolute joy. The 2012 musical -- more 99.9% an opera -- is a theatre nerd favorite: a sung through adaptation of 70 pages in the middle of Tolstoy’s War and Peace that focuses on the love lives of aristocrats in the middle of “a war going on out there, somewhere.” The music is constant, flipping between klezmer, modern pop, piano balladry, and Russian drinking songs, sometimes within the same numbers. If you’re not down with its style by the end of the excellent tone-setting “Prologue” (“gonna have to study up a little bit if you wanna keep with the plot”) you’ll be sadly lost amongst the lush world of The Great Comet. 

Another main reason I revisited this show -- a favorite of mine -- is because Duke’s entirely student-run Hoof ‘n’ Horn put it on. I’ve been long vocal and adamant that the most interesting theatre in the Triangle is coming from HnH, with their previous successes (marvelous and charming productions of Company, The Rocky Horror Show, and a semi-shaky Cabaret) far outweighing their misses. The joy in seeing fresh faces constantly as classes graduate and refill themselves is an added bonus.

So when I heard that not only HnH were doing Great Comet but it was being directed by a first time director I knew I needed to be there. So I went to the Rubenstein on Duke’s campus -- an underutilized space for theatre performance -- and sat at one of a dozen six-person dining tables in an unassuming set split between a mansion’s double staircase and a bar top, all designed by Clara McMillan. It was cozy.

Then “Prologue” begins and all hell breaks loose as both the song and show’s energy is expertly captured by the students, and we’re off.

This production of The Great Comet, masterfully directed by Ally Doss, knows exactly what sells this show: performances. The ensemble is note perfect, keeping their stamina up for nearly three hours (with a 15 minute intermission) and executing choreography (by Dria Edwards and Macie Sentino) seemingly carved from rubber: constantly in motion, bouncing, jutting out, swerving around tables expertly -- some playing instruments while doing so -- yet always snapping back into place and never losing track of serving the story. Theatre as total football, I love it.

Standouts include Maddie Lefkowitz as a lovingly manic Marya, Alaina Guo as Sonya -- giving a “Rose’s Turn” level delivery during “Sonya Alone” -- and Jeff Du slithering around the stage as the incredibly handsome homewrecker Anatole. Even the smaller roles (“minorrrrrrr characterrrrrrs”) are given tremendous energy: the duo of Mary (Sophia Horridge) and Prince Bolkonsky (Brendan Sweezy) perfectly teeters on the line between terrifying cruelty and hollow sadness. Benji Gourdji bounds onstage as troika driver Balaga and begins the “Abduction of Natasha” suite, which remains a manic sleigh ride the whole way down. A moment in the show I adore is the duet between Mary and Tiana Clemons’s Natasha, where the score calls for them to sing only one quarter note apart from each other on the word “constrain.” You could see audience members cringing and squirming in their seats at the dissonance, which means it was executed perfectly. I was giddy with joy.

Overall this was a pretty stellar production, the context of college students notwithstanding, with a few minor bumps. The ten-piece pit band, led by Tyler King, tackles Dave Malloy's genuinely complicated score with effective grace, with only a few moments of tempo hiccups that could be chalked up to volume control between the pit and the four roving musicians. Aaron Ng’s Pierre seemed to begin the show drained but appeared to down some coffee before Act Two, where the character’s energy is desperately needed and, thankfully, provided by Ng. I’ll give credit where credit is due when it comes to body mic cuing for a show as manic as this (sound design by Kelsey Goldwein), but the number of times characters entered scenes with their first words muffled felt borderline inexcusable at a certain point.

Having said all of that, this is a hard damn show to pull off. The fact that a first time director and a younger cast and crew did so to this degree is a wondrous miracle. I feel like if they had maybe two more days of rehearsal to sand down some of the tiny production issues this would have been a perfect night. But despite all of this, Duke's Hoof ‘n’ Horn continues to push the limits of what student-run theatre is capable of, and I will continue to holler from the rooftops that you need to be paying more attention to them. - A. Riggs 

Alex Riggs (she/they), staff writer, is a professional singer-songwriter based in Durham, NC. As well as operating Horse Complex Records, she has performed at large-scale festivals, recorded with popular musicians nation-wide, toured nationally, and appeared on numerous podcasts as Riggings, VAXXERS, and Criswell Brushes. She has served as musical director for multiple local theatre productions and composed a full-length original score. Alex’s album reviews, concert reviews, and festival diaries have also appeared in Shfl, Pedal Fuzz and Rezonatr. Learn more about their music work at horsecomplexrecords.bandcamp.com. She began writing for Chatham Life & Style in 2019.