Since its original moderately successful run on Broadway in 1976, Stephen Sondheim’s presciently multicultural Pacific Overtures has enjoyed few revivals compared to some of the composer-lyricist’s other shows (A Little Night Music, Company, Sweeney Todd, even Sunday in the Park With George).
The reasons are not hard to find. Pacific Overtures requires a large cast of virtuoso actor-singers playing multiple roles and trained in Kabuki-style movement, musicians familiar with both Broadway scores and traditional Japanese instruments (samisen and Japanese wind and percussion), and elaborate costumes and props. Although the musical originally featured an all-male cast (in Kabuki tradition), in recent years women have taken some of the roles, as they do in East West Players’ current production at the David Henry Hwang Theater in Los Angeles’ Little Tokyo — in some cases, portraying male characters.
More a revue than a conventional musical, Pacific Overtures tells a brainy anti-colonialist history lesson in loosely connected episodes about the opening of Japan to Western influence in the mid-19th century. Do not look here for a love interest or even what we would call a plot.
But EWP’s inventive, ambitious, and energetic revival — whose run was recently extended through Dec. 8 — puts it all splendidly together. This entertaining, funny, provocative, and deeply moving evening makes a strong case for including Pacific Overtures among Sondheim’s greatest creations. It will be a long time before we see a more perfectly cast — or lovingly and imaginatively prepared — incarnation.
Yes, there are some shortcomings. Sondheim’s Act 2 sags a bit after a strong Act 1, and the actors started to show some (understandable) fatigue by the end of the performance on Saturday, Nov. 16. Musically, scenically, and dramatically, however, this is an unquestioned triumph for EWP, which has been devoted to presenting Asian American actors and work since 1965, and for its new artistic director, Lily Tung Crystal.
Pacific Overtures has a long history at EWP. The company’s founder, actor-director-producer Mako, played the central role of the Reciter on Broadway in 1976 and then reprised it in a production he also directed at EWP in 1978. Tim Dang (then the company’s artistic director) led an acclaimed revival in 1998 and returns to direct the current version. In another homecoming, 48 years after playing the Boy on Broadway, EWP veteran Gedde Watanabe here becomes the Old Man (among other roles), joining with the Boy (portrayed by Gemma Pedersen) in the showstopping and tear-jerking duet “Someone in a Tree.”
The action unfolds on EWP’s rather small stage in front of a transparent shoji panel with sliding doors. Projected images occasionally scroll across. Tesshi Nakagawa’s spare scenic design employs gliding platforms for boats, rooms, and a royal chamber. Naomi Yoshida’s sumptuous costumes provide brilliant flashes of gold, silver, and red in long trailing robes.
For the hilarious “Welcome to Kanagawa” number, the bordello Madam (a gleeful Aric Martin) dons flamboyant drag and towering platform shoes as he/she instructs four clueless geishas in the art of pleasing strange “hairy” foreign men. In “A Bowler Hat,” Kayama (Brian Kim McCormick in a tour-de-force singing and acting performance) gradually adds accessories and clothing (the hat, a pocket watch, a cutaway coat) to represent his acceptance of Westernization over a period of 10 years.
One miscalculation was obscuring the faces of the competing American, English, Dutch, French, and Russian admirals in Act 2 with piglike masks (the Japanese see all foreigners as identical), which partially covered the actors’ mouths and muffled their singing. Catching the lyrics of the extended witty patter song “Please Hello” was difficult on Saturday. “Pretty Lady,” one of the show’s most alluring numbers, a lyrical round for three sailors (Watanabe, Kurt Kanazawa, and Scott Keiji Takeda, all fine singers) attempting to woo a shy maiden, also suffered from occasional inaudibility and awkward blocking.
Jon Jon Briones, a familiar face on Broadway and in the West End, commands the stage not only in the demanding role of the Reciter but also as the Shogun (slowly poisoned by his scheming mother in “Chrysanthemum Tea”) and the Emperor, a puppet (literally) until the final scene. Transformed into the Westernizing reformer Meiji, he disrobes to display a uniform sparkling with medals as part of the finale “Next.”
In the mostly speaking role of Lord Abe, representing traditional Japanese values, Kerry K. Carnahan started well but had some trouble projecting the tongue-twisting Sondheim lyrics. Adam Kaokept showed a natural comic flair as the fisherman Manjiro, the first to encounter the alien Westerners arriving in increasing numbers on Japan’s “sacred” land.
One group of musicians playing traditional Japanese instruments sat high on a platform in view of the audience, and another (the more traditional Broadway ensemble) was perched behind the transparent panel. They provided superb support to the action and singers. Sondheim’s ability to demonstrate in musical terms the transition in Japanese life during this period amazes. “Welcome to Kanagawa” begins with traditional instruments and gradually transforms into American Broadway style, heralded by a jazzy trumpet.
Any opportunity to see and hear this multilayered, probing, and shrewdly crafted show is reason for celebration. This one is surely no exception.
