Carbon Costume

Rose Red is a character in the musical Ghost Quartet. Written and composed by Dave Malloy (who also wrote and composed Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812), the show is described as a “song cycle about love, death, and whiskey.” In this case, four friends/ghosts sing of interwoven narratives. Rose Red is the heroine and assumes multiple identities, such as Roxie Usher, Starchild, Dunyazad, and Rose the Photographer. She is portrayed by Brittain Ashford, who also portrayed Sonya Rostova in Comet. All the actors sing and play their own instruments, and she plays the autoharp, keyboard, and tambourine.

Natasha Rostova is one of the protagonists in the electropop opera Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812. Based on a part of Leo Tolstoy’s War & Peace, the musical revolves around the affair between Natasha Rostova and Anatole Kuragin. Described as “young” in the “Prologue,” Natasha starts as a naive and optimistic girl. Her fiancee, Andrei, is away fighting in the war, and Natasha misses him dearly. Upon attending the opera, she becomes charmed by the dashing Anatole. The two begin an affair and plan to elope, leading to her fall from grace. Natasha becomes an outcast, like Pierre Bezukhov, who she then turns to for comfort. While not in the musical, the novel ends with their marriage. Denee Benton played this role on Broadway. Her understudy, Shoba Narayan, made history as the first South Asian woman in a leading role on Broadway. Phillipa Soo, who went on to play Eliza Schuyler in Hamilton, originated the role off-Broadway.