Pacific Overtures — Page 7

Just watched the first 30 minutes, does it get better?

The people who accept the premise of your question would say "no", and the others probably realize that this show is likely not for you.

Watch and find out. Be sure to report back.

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Updated On: 2/4/15 at 06:03 PM

Oh, you're back. I thought you had went to Jerry Herman Hell-- the title song of Dear World on endless replay.

Does anyone know what the actual reception by Japanese audiences was like? I'm kind of fascinated thinking of it right now.

Yes it's horribly cheesy, and from what I hear really bad in the context of the show, but on the cast album it just makes me so so happy.

Taryn, I believe it won several awards in Tokyo. Amon Miyamoto, the director (who started as a dancer and then a choreographer,) is probably the most respected director of musicals in Japan. But they don't really have a Broadway--so these shows have relatively limited runs (well, exceptions like Cats and other imports or the Takarazuka shows, exist.)

Miyamoto has a big rep with Sondheim--having done five or so shows (he also did an original LaChiusa musical--a bizarro adaptation of Nutcracker that I'm always trying to find out more about--LaChiusa did publish his diaries from the time on his site.) As well 8 or so years back Disney hired him to write a musical of The Snow Queen for their Tokyo Disney resort (a theatre outside the theme parks for guests visiting in the hotels,) which Menken would write the score for. They found his approach too dark--and we all know it eventually--after being utterly changed--became Frozen.

Wiki has a badly translated (they claim Weidman wrote PO's lyrics,) long summary of his works--the list of musical stagings is at the bottom.

I've heard that the Japanese production was fantastic, and it played well (in Japanese,) in DC at the Sondheim Festival. But that it lost something in the restaging in English at The Roundabout. But I haven't heard speculation as to what was lost in translation...

Japanese reception seems to be full of interest in general--also from what I've gathered from the initial NHK broadcast. Which is interesting, because it is a musical about Japanese history (granted the "Westernization" of Japan,) using elements of Japanese music and theatre, written, directed and designed by Americans with no Japanese heritage. I admit, I do find some of that problematic if audiences don't filter it back again through those terms--that, as authentic in ways as it may seem to us, it is actually an examination from people--all, except Weidman I believe, without much Japanese knowledge before working on the project. (Someone in this thread said that Next made them realize that Japan was probably better off before, or lost a great deal. I'm not sure this was the message, and I also don't think--from what little I know of Japanese culture--it's how the Japanese feel.)

"If you didn't like the first 30 minutes, then it's not the show for you. *shrug*"

Try not to *shrug* like that.

It's snotty.

Updated On: 2/5/15 at 07:44 AM

I saw an interview with Sondheim once where he explained that the show is written from the perspective of a Japanese man who has come to the USA and seen Broadway shows. He then returns to Japan and tries to write a show about the history of Japan in the American Broadway style. Of course we then have the added layer, as Eric suggests, that this concept is being written by Americans with no Japanese heritage.
So we have Americans trying to write as Japanese trying to write as Americans.

When you watch the show knowing this, you can see that it's the stuff of pure genius...my favorite Sondheim show.

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It's a show that evokes a more cerebral than emotional response. Musical theatre tends to be- even in its best works- a sentimental or melodramatic or emotionally heightened form.

Had it been a play, I think audiences would have "got" it much more easily. As a musical, it is so unlike other shows it is not surprising it wasn't embraced as an accessible piece of mainstream entertainment.

I am grateful there was time when such bold, experimental work could be produced on such a scale. For some of us, the creative team's innovations worked. For the rest, really I would have thought the best reaction ought to be gratitude that such an artistic environment ever existed- it sure as hell doesn't now!

"It's a show that evokes a more cerebral than emotional response."

Not for me! Not even close. The "There is No Other Way" and "Poems" sequences, just to name two, make me cry. The whole thing is funny, touching, and deeply unsettling. If those aren't emotional responses, I don't know what are.

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Preach. And Boris Aronson at the height of his powers.

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"cackles with glee at any unsmiling faces.)"

You're wrong.

I empathize with them. I understand their pain and frustration. I feel it, and share it.


"I am admitedly a Sondheim fan"

'Nuff said.

Updated On: 2/5/15 at 10:31 AM

I agree doodle.

It's a stunning song made all the more potent by its simplicity.


There's definitely a crazed menace to Next that I think implies "too much too quickly", which wouldn't have seemed much of a stretch back in the 70s when Japan was exploding with technology and influence.

Well put Charley.

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