Pacific Overtures

Synopsis

The story of Japanese and American relations related through a pair of friends caught on either side of the struggle between tradition and change.

Our Review:

30 June 2003

Stephen Sondheim's 1976 East-meets-West musical has its creator's typically dark comical touch. And, in this new co-production between the Donmar and the Chicago Shakespeare Theater, it's brought to mesmerising life by an all-male cast of Yanks and Brits, led by the excellent Joseph Anthony Foronda's narrator. It is not, however, without problems.

Performed in the round (almost) on Daniel Ostling's touch-of-the-Orient timber stage, Pacific Overtures traces the opening up of the ancient Kingdom of Nippon to Western trade after 250 years of cultural isolation. The event that sparked the country's emergence into its present-day commercial behemoth, according to book writer John Weidman (additional material care of Hugh Wheeler), was the arrival of Commodore Matthew Perry of the US Navy. In 1853, Perry and his four ships turned up in Uraga harbour preaching a message of peace - reinforced with the threat that, if unwelcoming, the Japanese would soon ...

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Latest User Review

USER: Whatsonstage.com (80.189.48.218) - 3 September 2003:

The writer of the review underneath forgot to add that the snippets of 'topical' knowledge about Japan at the end were completely unecessary and made me cringe. Please!!!!..we don't have to be cheezy to be relevant....

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