Back by demand, Horizon Theatre stages ‘Great Comet’ for third run

Often called an electropop opera, the show features live musicians dispersed throughout the theater playing a wide range of instruments over a soundtrack of electronic beats. The plot unfolds through song. Actors use the entire house as a stage, encircling audience members who can be seated at the bar, cocktail tables, couches, in the balconies or regular seats.

The story centers on Natasha (played by Alexandria Joy), a young woman who falls madly in love with the quintessential bad boy Anatole (played by Jordan Patrick) when her fiancé Andrey (played by Hayden Rowe) is off fighting in the Napoleonic wars. Natasha’s best friend and cousin Sonya (played by Anna Dvorak) cringes as she watches Natasha grow increasingly lustful and love drunk over Anatole, risking her integrity and throwing her future away for the seductive playboy.

In a moving moment of female friendship, Sonya swears she will barricade the door if it means saving her cousin from derailing her life over a melodramatic fling.

For being based on a 19th century Russian novel with the reputation as a thick and challenging read, the story is surprisingly relatable, especially in its romantic tropes. Humorously playing with book’s reputation, however, the program comes with a family diagram and the play opens with a song to help guests memorize the characters.

“There’s a war going on out there somewhere and Andrey isn’t here. Natasha is young … Anatole is hot; he spends his money on women and wine,” the song repeats through all the characters.

Pierre, the play’s other main character, is a melancholy, awkward man married to Andrey’s sister Mary. He is suffering an existential crisis, wondering if he’ll ever find the love he craves. By the end of the play, Pierre learns that by giving love — by showing compassion to Natasha while she faces the consequences of her own naive self-sabotage — he receives a satisfaction greater than romance. As the famous St. Francis prayer goes, perhaps it is more important to love, than be loved; to understand, than be understood.

The comet makes only one appearance, firing through the night sky as the climactic end. Is the blaze of interstellar light a bad omen? It could be. But the characters seem to find a renewed sense of hope and a reminder of their small place in the universe.

Be fair warned: After seeing the show and getting invested in the characters — a testament to Horizon’s enrapturing production — one might be tempted to pick up a copy of Tolstoy’s roughly 1,500-page novel “War and Peace,” which contains both Russian and French dialogue. Only then can one know what truly befalls Natasha or Pierre in the end. But if not, the scandalous slice devoured through the play is certainly satisfying on its own.

If you go

“Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812″ plays at Horizon Theatre (1083 Austin Ave. in Little Five Points) Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays at 8 p.m.; Saturdays at 2:30 and 8 p.m.; and Sundays at 5 p.m. The show runtime is 2.5 hours with a 15-minute intermission. Tickets start at $55. The play runs from now until Feb. 23. Tickets can be purchased at horizontheatre.com.