Getting There

It began on the high seas.

Dave Malloy, an aspiring composer making ends meet as a cruise ship pianist, made the fortuitous decision to while away some hours by reading “War and Peace.” A musical was born.

The initial production, in 2012, was at an 87-seat Off Broadway theater, Ars Nova, refashioned to resemble a Russian supper club. The actors, many of them also playing instruments, performed on bar tops while the audience, seated at cafe tables, was plied with vodka and pierogies.

Mr. Kagan, an Ars Nova board member, loved the musical, and in collaboration with his wife and co-producer, Janet Kagan, sustained it through years of wandering — a production in a tent in the meatpacking district, another in Midtown, and then a more conventional staging at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Mass.

To get it to Broadway, they recruited Mr. Groban, the top-selling recording artist, who had described a 2013 production of the show as “one of my most favorite theatrical experiences ever.” He would play Pierre, an awkward aristocrat with an unhappy marriage and a propensity for philosophizing.

To preserve the Russian milieu and intimate feel, the Imperial’s marble lobby was reconfigured to resemble a Cold War bunker, and two staircases were built so performers could bound up and down, instruments in hand, into the mezzanine.

Then, just as the Broadway production was beginning previews, an unseemly — and, to many, preventable — dispute erupted, as Mr. Kagan went to war with Ars Nova over that nonprofit theater’s insistence that he honor a signed promise to describe the show in the Playbill as “the Ars Nova production.” He argued that the provision was no longer binding; Ars Nova filed suit; Mr. Kagan backed down.