Trivia / Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812

• Acclaimed Flop: One of the best reviewed shows on Broadway that season, it struggled at the box office without a proven big name draw on board. Attempts to fix that issue then resulted in a major controversy which then killed the already financially struggling musical.
• Acting for Two: All three actors listed under "minor characters" have more than one role.
  • The same actor plays Andrey and his father, Old Prince Bolkonsky. Unlike the other two examples, there's an obvious link between these characters that's played up.
  • The actress playing Mary also plays the female opera singer and the maidservant in "The Abduction".
  • Balaga's actors also plays the male opera singer and the recurring servant.
• Dawson Casting:
  • Natasha is nineteen years old in the musical, with most of the actresses playing her being in their mid twenties. Averted with Erika Ikuta, who was twenty-one at the time of the Tokyo production.
  • Pierre is twenty-seven years old in the novel. He's commonly played by actors in their mid-thirties to forties.
  • Helene is described in the novel to be in her early-mid twenties. Amber Gray took the role when she was in her early thirties.
• Follow the Leader: An unintentional example; Dave Malloy was uncertain that a musical based on War and Peace would actually work, until a friend reminded him of another sung-through musical based on a very, very long and incredibly complex 19th-century European novel. This encouraged him to continue.
• No Such Thing as Bad Publicity: Averted. The announcement that Mandy Patinkin would prematurely take over the role of Pierre from Okierete “Oak” Onaodowan caused some serious blowback.
• Technology Marches On: Balaga's song draws attention to how his reckless driving then would be comparatively slow today.
  Balaga: Driving mad at twelve miles an hour!
  • That said, the speed given isn't quite accurate; a troika at full gallop could actually get up to 30 miles per hour, which while still slow compared to vehicles today was very fast compared to most land vehicles at the time. Plus, Balaga is driving his troika (a sled pulled by three horses) through crowded city streets.
• What Could Have Been: An infamous case. Mandy Patinkin was going to play Pierre in a limited run, but backed out when controversy hit that he'd be cutting short the run of the previous actor, Okieriete Onaodowan. Patinkin dropped out, but Onaodowan ended up leaving the show early anyway. The producers had been planning to find another big name to play the role after Patinkin's stint, but with the production facing so much heat at the time, they resorted to just announcing the production's closing. Following Onaodowan's departure, Pierre was played by standby Scott Stangland and then by composer (and role originator when the show premiered at Ars Nova) Dave Malloy.
  • Pierre's solo Dust and Ashes was originally going to take place seconds before Dolokhov fired at him in The Duel, with time coming to a stop. It was decided to place it after Pierre goes home instead because A:there was issues with having most of the cast stand statue still for a six minute aria and B:there were concerns about it being too similar to Hamilton which did a very similar thing a year or so earlier. In moving it, it does change the context of the song from being about his concerns about dying in the coming moments to being a more general existential fear of having wasted his life.

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