As a
complete musical, this isn’t one of my favorite Stephen Sondheim shows (largely
by default – when so many of them are exquisite, there’s a lot of competition
for favorites.) The book, while it makes
an effort, is a little too obviously written by white New Yorkers to credibly
tell a story about Japan. Still, for its
era, it does fairly well – just putting a show with an all-Asian cast on
Broadway in the ‘70s couldn’t have been easy, and I appreciate where it’s
coming from.
The
show is set in 1853, on the eve of Commodore Perry’s arrival to a Japan that
doesn’t open its doors to foreigners. We
see the response to the American ships from the great (the shogun and his
court) to the small (Kayama, a samurai elevated to a higher position mainly to
serve as a fall guy if things go south.)
A major theme is the divide between isolationism and expansionism – the
pros and cons of each and the danger of adhering too devotedly to one. The fruit born of change, the loss of
tradition, and the clash that results when absolute change and absolute
tradition try to reside in the same environment are all explored as Japan
starts to let the West in.
There
are definitely problems. The book relies
a bit too much on othering the Japanese, lingering on “exotic” details without
incorporating them organically into the story.
Additionally, while the westerners are variously depicted as pushy,
ignorant, and greedy, the Japanese characters don’t have a terribly active
presence in their own story. They do a
lot of fretting about the approaching ships, but they don’t have many practical
ideas about how to prevent their arrival, and when the Americans do land, the Japanese are mostly
steamrolled by them.
The
ending is more of a meditation than a resolution, but I don’t mind that. It’s a show that’s more interested in the
questions it raises than the story it tells, and that’s okay. It doesn’t make a lot of definitive statements
about good or bad, right or wrong, wise or foolish, but rather presents its
scenarios without much moralizing and simply asks us to think about them. And again, considering when it was written
and the cultural background of its authors, it really does try to look outside
the Eurocentric bubble. Americans are
involved, yes, but more than anything, their inclusion is about the wide shadow
they cast, and the focus remains firmly on the eastern society with whom they
come into contact.
All in
all, a mixed bag. The show’s one
unimpeachable quality, however, is its score.
I just love the songs in this musical.
From the sensationally witty rhymes of “Chrysanthemum Tea” to the cheeky
innuendo of “Welcome to Kanagawa,” from the lovely simplicity of “Poems” to the
cross-cultural cacophony of “Please Hello,” from the reminiscent “Someone in a
Tree” to the sinister-yet-achingly-beautiful “Pretty Lady,” I can honestly say
I adore every one of them. This was one
of the first Sondheim scores I ever heard start to finish, and while the whole
may not come together as cohesively or skillfully as some of his more famous
works, all the songs are excellent on their own. I imagine I’ll do a Top Five post one of
these days on the score, and even though the show only has eleven songs in it,
I’ll not sure how I’ll narrow them down.
Warnings
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