Thursday, December 18, 2014

Pacific Overtures (1976)


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

Some sexual content (including discussion of prostitution,) thematic elements, and some violence.

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