Pacific Overtures tells the history of Japan, from Commodore Perry's expedition to "Nippon" in 1853 to the country's rise as a powerful economic force.Tony Award winner B.D. The portrait of history as the sum of transactions between individuals who usually seem irrelevant was never as powerful as it is here. Once registered you can read a total of 3 articles each month, plus: Sign up for the editor's highlights Receive World University Following this season's triumphant production of Assassins, Roundabout presents another landmark musical by Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman. But “Pacific Overtures,” as originally conceived, is more complex than it seems, both in its perspective and its plot.The story focuses on two characters whose lives cross and then, in a way, flip, much as the roles of the United States and Japan did historically. The lives of both men are radically changed by the coming of American In “Please Hello,” the United States and four cartoon European powers clamor for trade rights, each in an apt musical style: a Gilbert and Sullivan patter song for Britain, a cancan for France. Book by John Weidman; additional material by Hugh Wheeler. Still, with its promises to “expel the barbarians” and let “Japan be Japan again,” it may at this moment benefit more from Mr. Doyle’s understatement than it would from a grosser, glossier treatment. Registration is free and only takes a moment. With the authors’ permission, he has cut the boffo “Chrysanthemum Tea,” a number in which the shogun’s mother wittily poisons him. PACIFIC OVERTURES a musical play in two acts. The same is true with Jonathan Tunick’s lovely if brassless new orchestrations.But as Mr. Doyle must have intended, something else is enhanced.

But to the extent that the Americans are meant to be hooknosed barbarians — as the Reciter, played by a stately George Takei, calls them in his narration — a great deal more vulgarity and verve are needed.Mr. And when Ms. Haley touchingly reappears as a girl mistaken for a geisha by British sailors, it suggests a connection that a plusher production would miss.Probably no version of “Pacific Overtures” could achieve all of the show’s global and local, exquisite and bombastic effects at once. In the extraordinary song “A Bowler Hat,” we hear and see their crossover happen: Kayama learns to smoke cigars and read Spinoza while Manjiro pours the tea ceremony and mantles himself in samurai robes.Most of all, the numbers astonish with their narrative nimbleness. The costumes (by Ann Hould-Ward) are contemporary and neutral, with only the occasional flash of bright color: a madam’s red shoes, a fisherman’s stars-and-stripes neckerchief. Mr. Sondheim considers it “essentially a Jewish mother song,” and he should know, but it is also part of a crucial stylistic counterweight that’s largely missing here. Summaries Set in 1853 Japan, Pacific Overtures follows the Westernization of Japan, mainly through the story of Kayama, a samurai, and Manjiro, a fisherman. Stephen Sondheim says that a major inspiration for “Pacific Overtures,” the 1976 musical now being revived at John Weidman, who wrote the musical’s book, says that, for him, the idea was born in an East Asian history class at Harvard. Unlike Harold Prince’s original production at the 1,500-seat Winter Garden, with its jaw-dropping Boris Aronson scenery and costumes by Florence Klotz, Mr. Doyle starts from zero and adds only what he feels he must. Immediately download the Pacific Overtures summary, chapter-by-chapter analysis, book notes, essays, quotes, character descriptions, lesson plans, and more - everything you need for studying or teaching Pacific Overtures.

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