By Steve Dow
A dozen merry performers pack into a rehearsal room, two levels above Sydney’s hurrying city hordes. “Chandeliers and caviar,” they harmonise while playing the accordions and cellos strung over their shoulders, as well as flutes, guitars, drums and keyboards. “The war can’t touch us here”.
These bon vivant troubadours dance within red concentric circles marked on the floor – nicknamed donut, cronut and croissant respectively, so they are easy to commit to memory – as the cast bring to life Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812, a sung-through musical by American composer and lyricist Dave Malloy.
Dean Drieberg is at the helm of the Australian premiere of Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812.Credit: James Brickwood
This eclectic indie-folk-electro modern opera, based on a section of the second volume of Russian writer Leo Tolstoy’s 1869 opus War and Peace, is about to have its Australian premiere at Sydney’s Darlinghurst Theatre Company – and the experience promises to be as immersive as it was on Broadway.
The ground floor of Darlinghurst’s Eternity Playhouse will be decked out like a modern club, while a line of seats in the auditorium upstairs has been removed to make way for a performer catwalk.
But what does a musical about love affairs among nobility, set amid the French invasion of Russia more than 200 years ago, have to say to an Australian audience in 2023?
The production’s Melbourne-based, Brisbane-born director Dean Drieberg, who was recently Australian resident director of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s hit Hamilton, says he always wants his work to have contemporary relevance.
“There is a war outside,” he says, “and we’re looking at a certain section going to parties, balls, and opera, getting drunk and having affairs – none of them are acknowledging doom knocking at the door.
“That is happening constantly around the world: we purposefully disengage because it’s easier to escape and live like it’s your last night.”
Dean Drieberg has long been committed to diverse casting.Credit: James Brickwood
Drieberg’s research showed people have often assembled in denial of deathly conflict – such as in underground clubs during the last gasps of Weimar Germany, and in speakeasies in war-ravaged London’s Soho, where people snorted cocaine.
More recently, daytime raves in Kyiv during the Russian invasion saw Ukrainians “party out in the open with music, so people had relief or release”.
The casting of the production is also pointedly contemporary, reflecting Drieberg’s long-term commitment to diverse casting. In the lead roles, for example, he has cast African-American Australian actor Grace Driscoll as Natasha and Wemba Wemba/Dhudhuroa and Greek actor Zoy Frangos as Pierre.
In 2020, Drieberg, whose parents are from Sri Lanka, self-published a guide to BIPOC casting in theatre that was widely shared on social media.
“I used to be an actor, and I was constantly getting told, ‘We need a white person’,” recalls the 39-year-old.
“I would audition for one show and be told, ‘You’re too dark to play this’, but then I would audition for other shows and be told I wasn’t Asian enough or black enough.”
In the rehearsal room, Driscoll is practising light, sweet ballads and making long arm gestures. She uses dance to express Natasha’s impulsive personality – a trait that leads to an affair with the roguish Anatole.
During a rehearsal break, Driscoll says Drieberg has a “very collaborative process – we have a lot of opportunity to give insights into what we want the piece to be”.
Genderqueer actor and drag artist Jules Pendrith plays Anatole. They are one of multiple trans and gender-diverse performers in the production. There are also a number of performers in the show who live with neurodiversity and disability, says Drieberg.
Frangos, meanwhile, is playing keyboard and grappling with big ballads as his character, the famously “warm-hearted Russian” Pierre, faces an existential crisis before he sees the comet. “I used to be better,” he sings, as the chorus leans their bodies forward and stomps a foot in unison.
“All the themes are as absolutely relevant today as they were 200 years ago,” he says later. “Love, betrayal, depression, alcoholism. The piece is about humanity.”
Frangos notes of the diverse casting: “All Dean is doing is what we aim for as an industry: diversity should be the norm.”
Drieberg wants aspiring performers to not only see themselves reflected on stage, but to also “normalise diversity for white audiences, who walk into a theatre and see [diverse] bodies on stage and allow their imagination to take them the rest of the way”.
Progress beyond “literal” casting of roles “is slow, but it is changing”, he says, but he thinks there also needs to be more attention paid to diversity behind the scenes.
Hamilton was a notable exception to the all-white creative teams that were once commonplace.
“When you have people of colour in creative roles, we have a different lens,” Drieberg says, smiling, the evidence of this truism singing together once again in the next room. “We infuse work with new ideas.”
Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812 is at Darlinghurst Theatre Company until August 20.
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