She didn’t have a ticket because it was sold out, so she decided to get there an hour early and see if she could get in. The standby line was already long, but she happened to know the first two people in line (who didn’t know each other), and they offered for her to be their plus one. The three of them got in, and no one else did. “I had an amazing time at this show,” McLean said. “I thought it was so beautiful and so fun. I remember watching it and thinking, ‘Oh, if I were in this show, I’d probably be that part right there.’” She saw the show in October or November, and by December, she had decided that in a year’s time she was going to be out of New York City. “I just wasn’t happy, and I felt like I was struggling in a way that I didn’t feel like I deserved to be,” she said. “I wanted to do something else. And I felt really good about that decision. I’d just been dumped, and I was like, I don’t need this. I feel free. I’m gonna get out of here.” Then in January of 2013, Ars Nova asked her to audition for “Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812” because it was transferring to an off-Broadway space. Ars Nova had asked the whole cast back, but one actress wanted to take another job in Chicago— the one who played the character that McLean had felt she was right for. “I thought, that’s so funny, because I don’t do this anymore, but I’ll just go in and sing a song that I wrote, and tell them how much I liked it,” McLean said. “And somehow I kept getting called in.” She’s been with the show ever since. On Oct. 18, “Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812” will begin previews on Broadway, starring Denée Benton as Natasha and Josh Groban as Pierre. McLean plays Marya, Natasha’s strict yet kind godmother. The musical is based on a 79-page section of “War and Peace.” The story is so simple and identifiable,” she said. “‘War and Peace’ seems like such a big meal, but this is really just one amuse-bouche; it’s not the whole thing. It’s a love story, basically. Who doesn’t love a love story? And who doesn’t love a love story that makes you cry and think about your own mortality? That’s the best kind,” she said, laughing. “That’s the Tolstoyan kind.” McLean said that “The Great Comet” is for fans of musicals like “Fun Home,” “Hamilton” and “Futurity”—shows that are challenging the notion of musical theater. “Rachel Chavkin, our director, refers to it as ‘theater 360’ in that it happens all around you,” McLean said. There’s no fourth wall separating the stage and the audience. “It’s at once more blown apart than that and more intimate, because there’ll be people sitting on the stage. They’re building performance spaces for us in the traditional audience; they’re building staircases from the balcony down to the orchestra. It’s all just levels, so that everything in the space is connected. Audience is everywhere; actors are everywhere. So at once you get great distance from people, and then sometimes we’ll be right up next to you and we’ll talk right to you. “It’s adapted from a book, and there’s no hiding that,” she said. “Often characters will talk about themselves in the third person, describing themselves and what they’re doing.” The music is very eclectic, McLean said. “There are some classical elements, but also folk, but also Russian folk, but also rock, but also electronica. A lot of things are going on at once. And I like the way that composer 34 I BOROMAG.COM I OCTOBER 2016 ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT
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