HOT RUSSIANS
Meet the sexy stars sharing the stage with Josh Groban
HE’S a slut, he’s a cad — and you can’t take your eyes off them. They’re Hélène and Anatole, the hot couple of “Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812.” Those who go to see Josh Groban’s Pierre end up captivated by his co-stars, this unorthodox Russian sister-and-brother act. The electricity between them seems more than mere sibling affection. But is it? The actors playing them won’t say. “I never answer that question,” says Amber Gray. “If the audience thinks they’re incestuous, that’s fine.”
Adds Lucas Steele: “Hélène and Anatole go after what they want. And if other people get hurt . . .” He shrugs, and they share a complicit smile.
The 30-somethings Steele and Gray — even their names sound good together! — have been with the show since it started, four years ago. Based on 70 pages of Tolstoy’s “War and Peace,” Dave Malloy’s immersive, electropop opera launched at the tiny Ars Nova theater and snowballed, playing two other, larger locations before opening in November on Broadway.
“At Ars Nova, we didn’t even have makeup,” says Gray, gulping tea between shows.
Since then, Gray’s had a baby (son Angus, now 1 ), and Steele’s pompadour went from dishwater blond to platinum.
Through it all, the two have stayed close. “We were always sort of psychic with each other,” says Gray.
“I whisper a lot in her ear,” says Steele. “Sometimes I’m in character, but other times obscenities will come out of my mouth!”
They say the show, which has them singing, dancing and barreling all around the theater, is a beast to perform — but it was even tougher when “Comet” played Kazino, a tent pitched in the Meatpacking District in the summer of 2013. There, carafes of vodka sat on theatergoers’ tables, and inhibitions disappeared along with the booze.
“It got to the point where we had security in the audience, because some of the gentlemen were getting very handsy with the females in the show,” Steele says.
Others simply wanted to join the action. One 40-something couple stood up and followed Steele and Phillipa Soo’s Natasha clear through the tent.
“There’s this section where I sing, ‘Wait, let’s sit down!’ and there were two people standing there,” Steele says. He finally walked them back to their seats. Another time, Steele took the phone away from a patron who was snapping pictures and gave it to a woman at another table, who refused to return it until the show was over.
But Kazino had its perks, including a deck where the performers could relax with VIP guests such as Liza Minnelli and Groban, their future Pierre. The Grammy winner’s been “a doll,” Gray says, and eager to fit into what Steele, a small-town-Pennsylvania native who’s now living in Harlem, proudly calls “a cast of misfits.”
As for those Groban groupies waiting at the stage door each night? “They’ve completely embraced us,” Steele says. One of them, a woman visiting from the Netherlands, recently gave him a little Anatole she’d made out of Legos.
“[Groban’s fans are] really intense, but they’re open to us,” he says. “It makes us feel as if we’re much further along!”