Chavkin likewise started teamingup with artists outdoors the TEAM, consistingof Dave Malloy, the author and author of “Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812.” That musical, based on an excerpt of “War and Peace,” was an immersive “electropop opera” about a naïve socialite (Natasha) and a lonesome intellectual (Pierre, initially played by Malloy) in nineteenth-century Moscow on the eve of a looming huge occasion. For the reveal’s veryfirst staging, at the not-for-profit theatre Ars Nova, in 2012, Chavkin and her imaginative group changed the small place into a Russian night club, with the walls covered in red velour and audience members seated at café tables; as the story unfolded, the entertainers whirled through the crowd providing bottles of vodka and plates of pierogi. “Comet” endedupbeing a cult phenomenon and drewin a group of enthusiastic manufacturers. In 2013, to scale up the production without losing its common environment, they paid to put up a giant campingtent to home 2 runs in uninhabited Manhattan lots. When “Comet” lastly reached Broadway, in 2016, Chavkin and her group kept an uncommon degree of rowdy interactivity, in part by seating more than a hundred audience members on the phase.
The director Brian Kulick, one of Chavkin’s coaches at Columbia, informed me that there are “forest directors and tree directors”—big-picture individuals and information individuals—and that when he veryfirst fulfilled Chavkin she was “the finest tree director I had ever satisfied. So detailed, so particular, so alive.” She tends to develop her most showstopping minutes through what she calls “simple gestures.” At the end of “Comet,” a miserable Pierre (originally played on Broadway by Josh Groban) takes a sluggish walk on a winterseason’s night, singing in a single beam of light. But quickly the ensemble members, who haveactually spread throughout the theatre in the dark, start a chorale below his words, and Pierre looks heavenward as a big, Sputnik-inspired chandelier—the titular excellent comet—starts to radiance, morevibrant and brighter, till the whole theatre is litup. Every member of both the cast and the audience looks up, too, developing a stunning sense of communion inbetween entertainer and audience. The director Lear deBessonet informed me, “When I go to see one of Rachel’s pieces, I understand that I’m going to feel electricalenergy in my body, throughout these minutes of liftoff.” Charles Isherwood, in the Times, called “Comet” “the most ingenious and the finest brand-new musical to open on Broadway giventhat ‘Hamilton,’ ” and included, with a “heresy alert,” that of the 2 he chosen “Comet.” The program made twelve Tony elections, the most for any production that season, consistingof one for Best Direction. Chavkin stated, “We felt like these kids storming the castle.”
For muchbetter or evenworse, the Broadway musical is a category that prefers legibility. Both “Comet” and “Hadestown” function opening numbers that present the cast of characters one by one. (“Gonna have to researchstudy up a little bit if you desire to keep with the plot,” the “Comet” ensemble sings.) During the veryfirst week of “Lempicka” sneakpeeks, Chavkin informed me, of its opening scene, “We’ve heard from individuals who are kind of puzzled.” Tamara de Lempicka’s life covered almost the whole twentieth century. A half-Jewish upper-class Polish lady, she married into a rich Christian household, endured the Bolshevik Revolution, went on to make her name in Paris, painting sensuous however hard-edged nudes of ladies, and then ranaway the Nazi profession for Los Angeles, where she lived well into old age. The heart of “Lempicka” was a bisexual love triangle inbetween Tamara; her otherhalf, Tadeusz; and a fictionalized womanofthestreet called Rafaela, based on one of Lempicka’s routine picture topics. The opening number churned through years of backstory in less than 10 minutes: Tamara weds Tadeusz and has a child in tsarist Russia, and Tadeusz is detained throughout the 1917 Revolution. After Tamara trades her gems (and, ultimately, her body) for Tadeusz’s flexibility, the set choose to getaway together to France. To help the audience on this busy sprint through history, the reveal relied on explanatory text forecasts: “Russia, 1916”; “Night train to Paris.”
There’d been a back-and-forth about whether to sluggish down the action by consistingof a beginning in which Tamara sits on a park bench in old age and laysout her past. Chavkin had cut the scene in weddingrehearsals, choosing to toss audiences straight into the maelstrom. Now, at the demand of Kreitzer, the playwright, a soft-spoken female with purple hair, Chavkin was thinkingabout putting the scene back in, however with a brand-new tune—actually an old one, from the La Jolla production. A coupleof days into sneakpeeks, she texted me, “Girl, we’re completely gonna put back in the old girl top of the program.”
The next Monday, with 3 weeks to go before the première, Chavkin was