Natasha and Pierre's relationship

I don't know about War and Peace as a whole but at least in the musical, I think it was more about Natasha than Pierre. No, I don't think Pierre is in love with her the whole time. It's the kind of story that makes sense when you read a lot of 1700's-1800's novels that are all about manners and class and status and the rules of polite society. Of course, Natasha shouldn't need a man's validation. But he's a family friend and given the way things were at the time, his reaffirming her worth as a human being and as a marriageable woman is significant after the abduction/aborted elopement. The proposal is more like... you still have value. I don't see you as a fallen woman or this ruined/tainted/broken thing. She's more excitable and passionate but otherwise, Natasha is written as a rather stereotypical ingenue. Thus, we spend most of the show waiting for her to catch up to what we know about Anatole and if you're used to a more modern sensibility, she seems irrationally crushed by the blow when she does find out. I do think there's a part of Pierre who has been lost in drink and burying himself away under the indignities heaped upon him by his "friends" and wife who wishes he could finally do something. If he were younger and unmarried in another novel he might in fact save her through marriage. I think it's more about honor and reputation than love or lust.

A cute little video that the show posted on this topic (although, as with the post above, book spoiler alert):

I caught only one ( but one incredibly clever) nod to their eventually marriage in the show. During "Sunday Morning" when Natasha and Sonya perform a ritual which involves shining a candle in a mirror and seeing the shape of their future husbands in the reflection, Pierre is moving back to his onstage study and steps in the path of the mirror's reflection as Natasha sees a vague shape in the mirror. So she DOES in fact see her future husband: Pierre. Rachel Chavkin is a genius.

aimeric said: "Froote is the closest here. To clarify, in the novel, the age difference between Natasha and Pierre is only about 9 years (when they meet at the beginning of the book, she is 12 and he 21, and he's a bit of a man-child, so they get on well), and that would have really been no problem in that time period. I mean, Andrei's actually even older than Pierre, and though he does briefly worry that he's too old for a young girl like Natasha, they decide to go for it anyway."

Given the altered characterization and change in casting, at least with Dave Malloy, I wonder if it's valid to think of the musical and book as two separate entities. I know he said he wrote the show by taking the novel and cutting parts out but I think it's downplayed any possible romance to such a degree that it's not apparent if you haven't read the book. And I happen to think it's a stronger ending if it's more about compassion and friendship and human decency than any romantic feeling.

ChairinMain said: "I caught only one ( but one incredibly clever) nod to their eventually marriage in the show. During "Sunday Morning" when Natasha and Sonya perform a ritual which involves shining a candle in a mirror and seeing the shape of their future husbands in the reflection, Pierre is moving back to his onstage study and steps in the path of the mirror's reflection as Natasha sees a vague shape in the mirror. So she DOES in fact see her future husband: Pierre. Rachel Chavkin is a genius.



"

Yep, I believe it's been staged exactly this way since A.R.T. In the novel, IIRC, the figure Natasha sees in the "candle in the mirror" scene (which takes place when she's much younger, maybe 12 or 13) probably represents both Andrei and Pierre: Andrei is represented by the fact that the man in the mirror is lying down (as also referenced in this scene in the musical: I won't spoil why that would represent Andrei), and Pierre is represented through some obscure color imagery (it's been a while since I've read the book, but I think Natasha sees the figure as being blue, a color she associated earlier with Pierre when she met him for the first time?). So the scene as staged in the musical is much more straightforward with its foreshadowing.

dramamama611 said: "I don't think there IS any romantic feelings at the end of the play. It's totally compassion. Any romance between them happens in the future.



"

Well, to quote Sondheim, "How quickly pity leads to love!" Of course, that's only if you consider 600 pages later "quickly".

I have to rely on recordings for now, but having read the novel, the eventual ending seemed perfectly foreshadowed at the close of the musical/opera. Very satisfying, IMO, even thrilling.

Fan123 said: "In addition to Pierre's 'moon' line, I'm guessing, without having seen the staging myself, that the similarity between looking up at the moon in awe (Natasha) and looking up at the comet in awe (Pierre) provides another hint of the affinity between the two characters. (To my memory, Natasha doesn't have a 'moon scene' in the book, although I might have forgotten?) I do agree with VintageSnarker that playing up the platonic angle is the better choice for this particular telling of this particular segment of the War and Peace story. But I think the knowledge that something else develops for the two of them down the track is a nice bonus, even if it's not essential knowledge (IMO) for 'getting' this show per se.



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Yeah, I thought that, too, from very early on, that the comet and the moon have been singled out by Malloy as parallel scenes. I say "singled out by Malloy" because Natasha does in fact have a moon scene in the book, but it's not in this section, so Malloy had to pull it from an earlier part of the book to make the parallel. (It's in the part of the book where Andrei has first met young Natasha at her family's country estate and he overhears some girly sleepover-type talk between her and Sonya on their bedroom balcony--some of the lyrics from "No One Else" are taken from Natasha's dialogue in this part of the book.)

dramamama611 said: "I don't think there IS any romantic feelings at the end of the play. It's totally compassion. Any romance between them happens in the future.



"

dmama, I hate to quibble because I disagree with you so rarely, but Pierre first sings that at the sight of Natasha's tears "his heart is filled with pity, tenderness and love."

Then the only spoken line in the play is Pierre's (paraphrasing): "If I were the handsomest and best man, and if I were free, I would drop to one knee right now and ask for your hand... and for your love."

Natasha replies, "Oh, Pierre" and leaves the room, only glancing back once at him through her tears. Pierre is so moved he starts to cry himself and quickly throws his coat over his shoulder and leaves before his tears are noticed. Outside, he sees the comet and sings (still paraphrasing), "Mankind seems so pitiful, compared to that glance she gave me through her tears." Then Pierre thinks about how the comet was said to harbinger death and destruction, but for him, it has meant the opposite: "My newly melted heart, now blossoming into a new life."

I think that's about as romantic as you can get from Victorian literature. To me, it is clear that Pierre and Natasha have fallen in love, but tentatively, because Pierre is not free and she is not yet recovered from her illness.

GavestonPS said: "dramamama611 said: "I don't think there IS any romantic feelings at the end of the play. It's totally compassion. Any romance between them happens in the future.



"

dmama, I hate to quibble because I disagree with you so rarely, but Pierre first sings that at the sight of Natasha's tears "his heart is filled with pity, tenderness and love."

Then the only spoken line in the play is Pierre's (paraphrasing): "If I were the handsomest and best man, and if I were free, I would drop to one knee right now and ask for your hand... and for your love."

Natasha replies, "Oh, Pierre" and leaves the room, only glancing back once at him through her tears. Pierre is so moved he starts to cry himself and quickly throws his coat over his shoulder and leaves before his tears are noticed. Outside, he sees the comet and sings (still paraphrasing), "Mankind seems so pitiful, compared to that glance she gave me through her tears." Then Pierre thinks about how the comet was said to harbinger death and destruction, but for him, it has meant the opposite: "My newly melted heart, now blossoming into a new life."

I think that's about as romantic as you can get from Victorian literature. To me, it is clear that Pierre and Natasha have fallen in love, but tentatively, because Pierre is not free and she is not yet recovered from her illness.



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I hear you, and totally get what you mean with the Victorian sensibilities. Something for me to ponder upon.



I took Pierre's line NOT to mean he was IN love with her, but as a feeling and compassionate person being able to forgive her indiscretions and see she was a good person, worthy of love. And HIS being a good person, would like to give her the joy she deserves.