INTERVIEW: Grace McLean rides ‘Great Comet’ to Broadway
Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812 follows a group of young lovers as they enjoy the excesses of Moscow and find not only companionship and love but redemption and a second chance. The musical, which is currently playing Broadway’s Imperial Theatre, is based on a 70-page section of Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace, a slice of literature filled with revelry, revelations and rousing fun.
The Broadway incarnation follows sold-out engagements in Boston and off-Broadway. For the big debut on the Rialto, the creative team recruited the talented Josh Groban for the Pierre role. Surrounding the music megastar is a cast of accomplished theatrical actors and singers, including Grace McLean as Marya D.
McLean first saw the show at its original run at Ars Nova. In fact, she took in the last night of an extended engagement. “I just barely got in, and I had a wonderful time,” McLean said recently in a phone interview. “It was so beautiful. I was crying for hours. I think I had emailed probably Rachel Chavkin, the director, just to say how much I loved the show, and I had a relationship with Ars Nova previous to that. I had done a couple of my own shows with them, and so that was in November of 2012. And then in January of 2013, I didn’t have representation, but Ars Nova called me and asked me to audition. So I did.”
From that point on, McLean’s life changed. Between seeing the show that November and auditioning two months later, she had made some important life decisions, including stepping away from acting and getting out of New York City. The Great Comet disrupted those plans.
“So the fact that I was cast in this show that I loved so much was like a big direction change for me,” she said. “Just getting to be involved in it was really special for me, and to get to perform with all these people that I had seen before — some of them I knew, but I hadn’t worked with them at this level yet — it was very exciting, and it was very challenging. It was sort of like a grad-school experience where I just get to learn from all these people that I work with, and I get to learn about the show and about myself as a performer every time that I do it. Yeah, it was really deep the first year that we did it off-Broadway.”
McLean joined the show for its second off-Broadway incarnation at Kazino. She has also acted in Brooklynite at the Vineyard Theatre, Bedbugs!!! at Arclight, The World Is Round at the Brooklyn Academy of Music and Sleep No More, the immersive-theater adaptation of Macbeth at The McKittrick Hotel. Following the Kazino engagement, she followed The Great Comet to the American Repertory Theater in Boston, and now she finds herself on Broadway.
When she’s not performing on stage, she’s writing and performing music with her band, Grace McLean & Them Apples, a musical outfit that has played Lincoln Center American Songbook seasons and even toured Pakistan on a U.S. State Department trip.
“I’ve spent a lot of time in concert settings with my own music, with my own band, and that’s a particular way of dealing with an audience,” she said. “Me having a band and interacting with an audience that way … there is no fourth wall. I love being able to feed off the energy of a crowd, to try to dictate it, to try to see what it is that they’re dictating to me, and this show welcomes and encourages that. I mean, so much of what we’re doing is given directly to the audience — not just a line but an egg shaker. And so it’s a different way of dealing with an audience for sure, but I think it’s more authentic in some ways than a traditional show where there’s such separation between performer and audience.”
McLean called The Great Comet a fun party but also a workout. Other adjectives she used: surprising, tragic, beautiful and gut-wrenching. “Not just a little bit of them but the deepness of all of them are in this show, so it’s really cathartic eight times a week, which is tiring,” she said.
KEEPING BUSY
Outside of those eight shows a week, McLean works with her band, and they are preparing for a concert at Rockwood Music Hall Monday, March 13. During the day, she’s also writing a musical that’s been commissioned by LCT3. There’s also a music video in the works.
These are many projects for a performer who almost stepped away from New York City and acting a few years ago. “I’m still working with my band on releasing a full-length album,” she added. “We have two EPs out, but we want to release a full-length at some point this year. It’s definitely difficult because I’m in this show, and one of my band members, who’s also a producer, he plays in Dear Evan Hansen. It’s hard for us to get together and do that work, but I find it essential to my wellbeing to test out all different creative aspects of my life.”
McLean’s character of Marya is an important part of the musical. The actress’s friends think the role is villainous, but McLean disagrees. Instead, her interpretation of the character on the Imperial stage has more love and passion, at least that’s how McLean sees her.
“If I can figure out who I love [in the role], then I can do the work,” she said. “Clearly it’s Natasha, so that’s what I connect to, like how much can I love this person? And then when that person makes a bad decision and sort of betrays me, what does that love turn into? In the second act, Marya comes along, and she’s kind of scary. But for me, that’s all coming from this place — oh, I’m going to cry if I talk about it — it’s coming from this place of love betrayed. That’s what really spurs her to have this outburst at Natasha, and ultimately it’s Marya that spurs Pierre to come up out of his existential rut and do something. It’s all based in love.”
McLean has read the source material for the musical twice. She first read the book for fun in college, and then she read it again for the off-Broadway run at Kazino.
“It’s really wonderful to find all the little gems and the little backstories between these characters because their lives are so intertwined,” she said. “Marya is referred to as a dragon lady or a dragon woman. I love that image, so I let that sort of permeate my psyche as I think about Marya and ways in which she can be a dragon. Also there’s this really great scene where Marya is at a ball with the Rostovas, Natasha’s family, and Natasha’s father is dancing with her. And it’s kind of funny because her father, he’s really a jovial guy. He’s just trying to have a good time with everybody, and Marya is kind of stiff. She wants to have a good time. She’s a little bit awkward, but she’s still trying. I love that image of her as well — stern woman who’s trying to loosen up. It’s not super easy for her.”
THE MUSICAL RESISTANCE MOVEMENT
McLean has been around music her entire life. Her parents were musicians, so instruments and singing were a constant presence around the house. She remembers driving with her parents to gigs and helping unload their gear. The garage of her childhood home was turned into a rehearsal space as well.
Like any teenager, McLean eventually rebelled against the musical side of her family. She remembers thinking that she didn’t want to be a singer because her mother was a singer. “I didn’t want her telling me what to do or how to do it, but I must have liked performing,” she said. “I know that because the first play I ever did was in fourth grade. We did Thumbelina, and I was cast as Thumbelina. And normally it was the sixth graders who got the lead, but because it was about a little tiny person, they were looking for the fourth graders. That was pretty cool. My mother helped out on that.”
Years after her stage debut, she enrolled in a performing arts high school in southern California. She went for “serious acting” because she still resisted the life of a musician, but at the age of 16, she had a master class with jazz singer Carmen Bradford.
“I remember my voice teacher being like, ‘Grace, you can go last if we have time for you,'” she said. “People had gone to sing their song with her, and she was working with them. … So it was time to go, but Carmen was like, ‘Well, if there’s anybody who hasn’t gone yet, I’m here to work with people.’ And so I went, and I sang my song. And she was like, ‘Oh, you save the best for last.’ I was like, I don’t know what she’s talking about, and then she offered to private coach me. So I started taking voice lessons from her. That was the first time I had any formal voice training really was with Carmen Bradford. I’m from southern California, so I would go up and meet her in Los Angeles. That was the first time I really could think of myself as a singer when I was 16, and I was learning about jazz. What was great about Carmen is I didn’t really do technical warm-ups. It was really about lyric and storytelling and pocket and style. I think that was an interesting way into thinking about singing and voice and music, and I really appreciate that.”
Those lessons on the lyrics and storytelling can now be evidenced on the grand stage of the Imperial Theatre in one of the most original shows to play the crowded Broadway marketplace.
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812 is currently playing Broadway’s Imperial Theatre on West 45th Street. Click here for more information and tickets.
