Pacific Overtures, the Kabuki-ized depiction of the United States invasion of Japan in 1853 was crafted by bookwriter John Weidman, composer-lyricist Stephen Sondheim and director Hal Prince. Now it’s back again—it’s not back all that often, actually—in an utterly charming and thought-provoking production at London’s Menier Chocolate Factory by way of Japan’s Umeda Arts Theatre.
Odd, isn’t it, that works of art, even flawed examples—though the Pacific Overtures flaws are lessened here—so often subtly merge themselves with the times in which they are revisited. This musical, at its core a ritualized history lesson with an ambivalent moral, originally seemed strictly a tough look at how a fully realized culture is plundered and irrevocably altered (for better or worse?) by an even more forcefully invasive culture.
The piercing gander this go-round seems more engineered to get today’s audiences thinking about the issue of isolation. This is, of course, at a time when once again the choice in many spots—in the United States, for one prominent spot—is to reexplore the isolationist path. Not that isolation in the 21st-century, when the globe has shrunk, isn’t a far more difficult proposition.
The story Prince, Sondheim, and Weidman tell has a Reciter (Jon Chew, in full command here) unfolding the slow disintegration of Japanese isolationist resolve through the adventures and misadventures of two common man protagonists, Manjiro (Joaquin Pedro Valdes) and Kayama (Takuro Ohno). Their plights bring them into contact with their Shogun (Saori Oda, stark, glowering; is she the first woman in the role?) and Admiral Matthew C. Perry (Lee V G), who provided the tuner’s title in a letter he’d written the Emperor. (In the course of the ensuing events pacific overtures weren’t so pacific, after all.)
Director Matthew White’s intimate take unfolds on a narrow thrust stage, where designer Paul Farnsworth has set pieces like grilled, gilded walls sliding by. Costumer Ayako Maeda outfits the 16-member cast accordingly and reaches a sartorial peak in the Shogun’s shining gold robe. Lighting designer Paul Pyant and sound designer Gregory Clarke, as well as Japanese movement and cultural consultant You-Ri Yamanaka and video designer Leo Flint, match their colleagues skills. All elements lend this Pacific Overtures its gem-like magnetism.
Since the score is Sondheim in his prime, it’s for sure a gem collection. Starting from the collaborators’ decision to present something as Japanese through American eyes and ears and back again, his effect is obtained by smartly maneuvering Japanese rhythms and tones. Always hot to solve a puzzle, the now-can-do-no-wrong-ever Sondheim offers an amazing array. Jonathan Tunick’s orchestrations (or versions thereof?) greatly enhance the effect, as does Paul Bogaev’s musical direction.
Sondheim’s admitted favorite number in the line-up is “Someone in a Tree,” about the questionable accuracy of historical reportage. This brilliant specimen follows two eavesdroppers announcing the goings-on at a closed treaty meeting. If the songwriter had a group of his all-time favorites, this one must have been high on it. A genius of rhyming (sometimes to a fault?), he keeps his reputation intact all along. To wit: Often citing his appreciation for and homage to W. S. Gilbert and Sir Arthur Sullivan over the years, he grabs the opportunity to pastiche the team in “Please Hello,” the very model of an all-convincing bow to them.
John Weidman is the other man of this hour. To begin, the Pacific Overtures idea was his, and he seems to have been overseeing it since. From the 1976 introduction, it’s had various pros and cons lodged. Indeed, it may be Prince’s scrupulous adherence to the Kabuki influences that cooled early patrons unfamiliar with the theatrical style or put off by its unyielding insistence on it.
As a result, Weidman has fiddled with it over the intervening decades. As a matter of fact, he has done some fancy fiddling elsewhere this season. He cleverly spiffed up his father Jerome Weidman’s script for the I Can Get It for You Wholesale revisit at Classic Stage Company. And speaking of CSC, that’s where in 2017, he worked on John Doyle’s Classic Stage Company Pacific Overtures revival and reached this revision.
He’s trimmed it into an intermissionless 90-minute one-act, tightened individual scenes, scrapped a song or two. (One is “Chrysanthemum Tea,” a mother-to-son harangue that he concluded felt out of place.) In its present form —and especially as performed by this cast—Pacific Overtures may have found its present, perfect shape.
Pacific Overtures opened December 4, 2023 at the Menier Chocolate Factory (London) and runs through February 24, 2024. Tickets and information: menierchocolatefactory.com
