Pacific Overtures

Susan Granger’s review of “Pacific Overtures” (Studio 54, 2004-2005 season)

In its continuing quest to revive problematic theatrical works, the Roundabout Theater brings Stephen Sondheim’s highly intellectual and complex 1976 musical to Broadway this season.
Utilizing on a multi-layered book by John Weidman with additional material by Hugh Wheeler, the show consists of a fluid series of vignettes depicting the peaceful arrival in Imperial Japan in 1853 of the American Navy fleet in an attempt to open East-West trade relations with this isolated, feudal nation. As the Recitor (B.D. Wong of TV’s “Law & Order: SUV”) mediates the story, as well as revealing bits of Japanese history, it becomes a kind of political parable within an authentic dramatic context, considering our contemporary involvement in Iraq.
The plot involves a timid Samurai-turned-Governor and a feisty fisherman who are delegated to confront Japan’s would-be Western “invaders,” the Americans under Commodore Matthew C. Perry, who are depicted as comical caricatures with curly wigs and grotesquely deformed faces.
Directed and choreographed by Amon Miyamoto, utilizing sliding shoji screens, it’s an unconventional, stylized, episodic musical, influenced by ritualistic Asian musical forms, like Noh theater, and European operetta. Jonathan Tunick’s new orchestrations make the subtlety of Sondheim’s score soar. “Someone in a Tree” captures how the eye-of-the-beholder shapes what is seen, “A Bowler Hat” explores loss of identity and “Chrysanthemum Tea” cleverly masks poison.
The Asian-American cast is superb, particularly Michael K. Lee, Paolo Montalban, Alvin Y.F. Ing, Sab Shimono and Francis Jue as the amusing “chief welcomer” to Kanagawa. Still, the audacious concept of “Pacific Overtures” seems far better than its execution.

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