Comet as a great example of Verfremdung?

I know Comet has been billed as the most immersive experience on Broadway, but upon reflection, I feel it does more to isolate and distance insteading of pulling the audience in. For example, you are often reminded that you are watching a show instead of being in one (the opening song that asks you to read the program and the letter song first come to mind), and, if you are sitting in certain seats on stage, you get to pass letters, have performers sitting next to you, shake eggs etc. It might seem that Comet's (comparatively) heavy audience participation makes it a lot more immersive, since you are no longer passively watching a two- or three-hour musical but actively being a part of it. However, I think the participation also breaks the connection you build with the characters and the story along the way or at least the way we normally build it. I mean, my first reaction when Natasha sat beside me was more like "Whaaaaaat!? This is kind of strange but really cool!" than sympathizing with her story. It certainly pulled me out for a moment and got me thinking more about the craft than the story before returning to it.

Also, the show is an epitome of anachronism. Be it the set, the score, the lighting, the lyrics, or the choreography, clearly the creative team doesn't want to recreate an 18th Century Russia. Instead, we get a weird but heady mix that evokes some of the old glorious Russia, a touch of the Soviet Union era, and a spill of the Russia now that comes after it. In other words, what you see is not a world whose time and location you can easily and directly identify. You are in a fascinating world of nowhere and everywhere. Now, this might throw some people off, or not. But it does make it quite difficult for an audience member to instantly settle in.

This is not to say any of what I mentioned is bad or detrimental to the show. Rather, I am even more impressed by the artistic craft and thoughts that go in the production because it reminds me of Brecht's theory of Verfremdung, which he defines as "playing in such a way that the audience was hindered from simply identifying itself with the characters in the play. Acceptance or rejection of their actions and utterances was meant to take place on a conscious plane, instead of, as hitherto, in the audience's subconscious." I think the choice serves the piece excellently well. The show works, from my interpretation, on the condition that one is able to see the contrasts in motifs, music styles, and, most importantly, the flashy but superficial, excessively materialist society and people inhabiting it, and Pierre's weariness of it and the grace Natasha shows him. That's what makes the last line "into a new life" so potent and beautiful. And this goal is certainly easier to achieve when people are conscious of what's happening instead of being really IN the ride as they would in most plays and musicals. Any thoughts?

Very well put, both of you. I think there have been successful shows in the past which have attempted the same structure, but no one at the scale of The Great Comet comes to mind. It truly is a spectacular extravaganza. Off the top of my head, Pippin and Hedwig have similar things going for them. Pippin with the lead player essentially becoming the character he's supposed to be playing (depending on the production), and Hedwig with the glorious ending where you get to be a part of Hedwig's cathartic self-healing journey but it doesn't feel like a real story but a collection of essays, until the last couple songs.

I agree to all of these. Fantastically well said!

I'm gonna have to say no. If anything Comet is like a commercialized version of Artaud's Theatre of Cruelty.

asimplegal2 said: "I'm gonna have to say no. If anything Comet is like a commercialized version of Artaud's Theatre of Cruelty.



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I still haven't seen the show (though I have listened to the recording a number of times) and I'm not always sure I follow Artaud's circular reasoning, but your post makes sense to me.

Impossible to discuss without SPOILERS.


Haven't seen it since December, but what I recall most: the bells, whistles, conventions and both directorial and text-specific stylings that distract or distance, both terms used here neutrally, not pejoratively, are employed and then semi-abandoned along the way. The show tends to toss the creative bag aside in its final half of act two and deliver something akin to old school musical theater, as the titular characters find one another. I remember feeling like I was back in the Hal Prince "Candide" at the top, especially with the spliced audience, filling aisles, tossed accoutrements. I then felt elements of both the Fosse and Paulus "Pippins" -- and a whiff of Richard Foreman* every now and then. The show was so appealing, I didn't care. But I know a lot of folks who didn't fall in love, and a handful who left at the intermission. It's quite a show, but not for everyone. Nor does it have to be.

*Especially Foreman's "Don Juan" done at the Guthrie and then in the park, not to everyone's taste, either.

Updated On: 7/19/17 at 12:52 PM

First of all, I'm loving this discussion. It's so cool to see all these well thought out and varying answers.

Secondly, I thought I'd just share my personal take on the show's set-up. I always thought the concept that Rachel and Dave were going for was for the audience to feel like they had gone out to a supper club with a bunch of friends, and some of those friends were like: "Hey! Let's do a reenactment of that really good part of War & Peace." This is why there's so many anachronisms, such as Pierre singing "hours at my screen," the ensemble's costumes, the strobe rave, single sex couples dancing together during "The Ball," Hélène calling herself a slut, and the extremely diverse casting. It's also why the cast pops out at the top of the show, out of character, and mingles with the audience, and, of course, why there's four bars in the theater.

I've seen the show twice with companions (once by myself), and I told these thoughts to one of my guests, but not the other. The one who I told enjoyed the show much more than the other, who kept getting bogged down by thoughts of "But it's 19th century Russia. Why are they wearing neon?"

I think the real genius of the show (and Rachel's direction) comes from the fact that up until "Pierre and Andrey," no part of you actually feels grounded in that time period. It's just a show about a "complicated Russian novel." Sure, there are hard-hitting and emotional moments beforehand ("Dust and Ashes" and "Sonya Alone" come to mind), but you never spend enough time in that stripped up solitude – before the show's last twenty minutes – to really lose yourself in the material. Then all the bells and whistles disappear and suddenly you're left with three people dealing with very real consequences. Someone described it as a "hangover," and I think that's the best way to put it. Rachel uses a lot of juxtaposition in the show, and in my opinion, that does wonders in making the emotional moments more emotional, and the "just for fun" moments even more fun.

^^^^ LOL. I don't recall Brecht ever discussing stagedooring, but I suspect he would be horrified by our modern cult of celebrity. And besides, there's plenty of evidence that, in his mind, Brecht was the only star of Brecht production.

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I don't know Malloy or Chaikan's other work, but COMET sounds reliably post-modern. Post-modernism borrows from many modernist (early 20th century) movements from Surrealism to Bauhaus, WITHOUT necessarily sharing the goals of those movements. So discussing whether COMET is more akin to Brecht than Artaud may be beside the point in the end.

As Brecht pointed out back in the 1950s, audiences have become so clever that they automatically turn presentational elements into representational ones UNLESS the production keeps changing its stylistic rules. As post-modernism has augmented the fluidity of time, space and attitude in the theater, audiences have responded with ever increasing sophistication. (Look at the simple sitcom: nowadays, the "A" and "B" stories may unroll in entirely different times and places. Nobody even tries to bring them together at the end.)

This problem alone may explain the sudden shift in style at the end of COMET. For often, post-modernism uses the devices of modernist theory without reference to the movements' manifestos.