Reviewing the Drama: Broadway, Off-Broadway, Ballet, Movies, and TV Reviews

The show starts when you walk in to the Imperial Theatre, with the entryway looking like a dive club. The walls are lined with posters for Russian bands. In the house, lively Russian music plays as the audience gets seated in the opulent Russian nightclub, outfitted with orbital and constellation–looking light fixtures. The design appears to continue in the mezzanine, with blood red curtains and portraits of notable Russians adorning the walls. Looking around, you can see that the playing area is everywhere, making this a fantastically immersive experience. I had a blast. (Be sure to check out all the seating options, including stage seating, to get the most out of the experience.) Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812 is inspired by a brief passage in the classic Leo Tolstoy doorstop novel, War and Peace . This portion is a soap opera, but one you care about when you're reading the full novel. In The Great Comet , the action centers on Natasha and Pierre (obviously)....

Dave Malloy 's new show, Preludes , is "inspired by the music of Sergei Rachmaninoff." If only Rach knew the impact he would have he might not have gone through the tsuris that is the action of Preludes . The title is taken from Rachmaninoff's breakthrough work, but it's so much more. Preludes are a hint of what's to come, yet it's the very excitement created by that hint, that taste that paralyzes Rachmaninoff and makes him loathe to write more. As noted in the program, Rach's "Symphony no. 1 in D minor, opus 13" premiered when the composer was 24, and the performance was a disaster. He was so stung by the reception that he developed a three-years-long bout of writer's block. As Malloy ( Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812 ) explores in his play, the icy reception wasn't the only thing keeping Rach from writing. Set inside Rachmaninoff's mind, Preludes is an imagination of what happened in Rach's sessions wit...