In the beginning, there was the book. Famously long, and a bit of a slog. But Volume 2 Part 5 caught the cruise ship pianist’s eye.
There was that beautiful girl, killing time in the big city while her fiancé was away; the ill-advised flirtation with a dreamy playboy; the unhappily married rich man starting to fall apart; the swirl of back-stabbing aristocrats, Russia at war, and a comet streaking across the sky.
This section of “War and Peace,” Dave Malloy thought, would make a perfect musical.