OFF ON A COMET

SYNOPSIS

During a prelude, a woman sings in front of a Victorian theater proscenium that frames a scrolling illustration of the stars passing by. A glowing cutout of a comet appears, growing brighter until it crashes into the Earth. The musical employs Victorian staging techniques throughout, with painted flats, forced perspective, and distorted scale between people and setting.

It’s 1877. As the sun rises, Jules Dupont (an American serving in the French Foreign Legion in Algiers) awakens to find his hut has collapsed on top of him and his aide, Louis. Louis is worried that gravity seems to have diminished, but Jules is focused preparing for a duel over the woman he loves. At the dueling site, they find themselves facing an unknown ocean, and night falls much earlier than expected.

They are rescued by a flying steamship, piloted by Philomène “Captain Phil” Daniels and her crew of dancing Bavarians, and together they go searching for other survivors of some unknown cataclysm. The Rock of Gibraltar, now an isolated pinnacle, is manned with British soldiers who insist that everything is fine and refuse to abandon their posts. Astronomer Williamina Fleming, the woman Jules loves, is found sitting on the remains of her observatory. She explains that their corner of earth has been carried off by a comet, and they need to find a place to survive. Jules spots a volcano in the distance, and they head for the volcano in hope of finding shelter.

At the volcano, they rescue an injured and unconscious Vasily Dokuchaev—the man Jules was planning to duel. Williamina nurses him back to health with a tenderness she has never shown Jules. The survivors transform a cave into living quarters, with scientific equipment and luxuries powered by steam from the volcano. Jules continually tries to sabotage Williamina and Vasily’s relationship, and is relegated to kitchen duty.

Williamina tells the survivors that the comet will return to earth, but that they will probably freeze to death first, and they may all die in the comet’s second impact. Just then, the growing cold extinguishes the volcano, plunging them into darkness. Lanterns are lit, revealing the cave is now lined with icicles—and that Vasily has accidentally impaled himself on Jules’s steam-powered potato peeler. The cold extinguishes the lanterns, but when the volcano begins to glow once more, we see that the icicles are gone but the men have all grown long beards—the survivors have spent a year in frozen sleep, and are now speeding back towards earth.

Jules hopes that, since his rival is gone, Williamina will now be his. But while she understands the death was an accident, she cannot forgive Jules for his manipulative behavior toward her, and his unkindness toward Vasily. Jules attempts to exile himself, traveling with Capt. Phil on the steamship. They find the British soldiers at Gibraltar—there are fewer of them now, but they are just as stubborn and rude as before. The steamship travels all the way around the comet and returns to the volcano. The other survivors still aren’t happy with Jules, so he climbs the volcano and begins making a hot air balloon, planning to jettison himself into space. Instead, Williamina realizes that the balloon may be their best chance to survive the comet’s second impact with earth. She reconciles with Jules, and all the survivors climb into the balloon, singing of hope as the balloon lifts into a blazing sky.