Pacific Overtures: Review - Menier Chocolate Factory
- Craig Glenday
- 8 hours ago
- 6 min read
In celebration of the 50th anniversary of Pacific Overtures, we look back through the archive for features and reviews. Here, Society regular – and contributor to Musical Theatre Review – Ian Bowkett reports back from the 2023/24 Menier production full of praise for Matthew White’s much-anticipated co‑production with a largely Asian cast.
Review of Pacific Overtures at the Menier Chocolate Factore, 2023. Author: Ian Bowkett
Pacific Overtures is one of Stephen Sondheim’s most sophisticated and brilliant scores. Its premise and John Weidman’s book are endlessly fascinating, and every production we get of it is staged beautifully; the original Broadway run even won that year’s Tony Awards for Best Costume and Scenic Design. However, the musical is rarely produced and is nobody’s favourite Sondheim show. Why is this, and has the new Matthew White-directed production at London’s Menier Chocolate Factory changed things?
Let’s be clear: it’s a pretty out-there idea for a musical. Pacific Overtures tells the story of the previously isolated 19th‑century Japan reluctantly opening its doors to trade with foreign nations. The play is written by two white westerners (with additional material by a third: Sweeney Todd book-writer Hugh Wheeler) from the imagined perspective of a Japanese playwright’s idea of what an American musical about America’s influence of Japan would be like! So far, a difficult pitch to an audience yearning for kick-lines and escapist glitz.
The idea of incorporating traditional Asian harmony into the score (fans of parallel fourths rejoice), elements of Japanese theatre in the staging and casting entirely Asian performers could also have turned off early audiences. Broadway theatregoers in 1976 might not have all been openly xenophobic, but it’s conceivable they were perhaps less willing to step so far from the familiar when they could go see the equally innovative but decidedly American A Chorus Line down the street. As a result of its initial unpopularity, Pacific Overtures is rarely staged, but this new production makes a very strong case for a reassessment.
Crucial to its success is the fact that this was a co-production with Umeda Arts Theater, one of Japan’s premier producing companies. In their Japanese-language mountings of the piece in Tokyo and Osaka earlier in 2023, they won acclaim for the extra power bestowed upon the piece when reinterpreted by a part-Japanese creative team. This power is very much still in evidence at the Menier. While the play always has used cultural stereotypes as a necessary part of its dramatic vocabulary, these moments feel knowing and less uncomfortable than they might have in less qualified hands.
Controversially, this version of Pacific Overtures omits large chunks of the book and even some songs – including the beloved “Chrysanthemum Tea” – in the name of a purer approach to the storytelling. In a long piece (105 minutes) that no longer has an interval, a lot of the cuts are fine; as written, this isn’t a play that relies on detailed character development. However, there certainly are moments in the decades-spanning and fast-moving plot that could be dwelt on a little bit longer. Removing a song like “Chrysanthemum Tea” that has been deemed to be detrimental to the purely Japanese tone of the early action is an understandable action in principle, but one does wish the authors had been a little less stringent given how much of this early action is played for laughs anyway.
But honestly, thank God for the laughs. Directed badly, Pacific Overtures could be a pretty alienating piece. This production squeezes humanity from the epic and human story, with the cast working wonders in bringing the audience along for the ride. This is very much an ensemble piece, with all performers given the spotlight at various points. Rising star Joaquin Pedro Valdes is charm personified as fisherman-turned-Samurai Manjiro, with his electric physical energy complemented perfectly by Takuro Ohno’s introspective and quietly devastating Kayama. The action is narrated and guided by a charismatic gameshow-host-aping Jon Chew as the reciter, and Saori Oda proves the folly of the original production’s nearly all-male cast (in the Kabuki tradition) by playing a hilarious yet genuinely imposing Shogun (as well as an equally funny Madam in the second half).
Despite the sad excision of “Chrysanthemum Tea”, there are plenty of other breath-taking musical moments to relish. Manjiro and Kayama’s gorgeous “Poems” is affecting as sung by Valdes and Ohno, and the return of the musical theme in Act II is remarkably devastating given how little we get to know these characters. On the other side of the emotional coin, “Please Hello” is Sondheim working on such a high level of intricate lyrical comedy genius that his multi-syllabic rhyming and effortless pastiches feel less like showing off but essential to the piece. Eu Jin Hwang, Lee V G, Ethan Le Phong, Sario Solomon and Patrick Munday all shine in this section, a showstopper that is worth the ticket price on its own.
Sondheim himself considered “Someone in a Tree” to be among his finest songwriting achievements, and it is done justice here by Chew, Masashi Fujimoto, Joy Tan and Iverson Yabut. It is staged beautifully and leaves the audience considering the true nature of history, legacy and reality.
I imagine the biggest criticism of this Pacific Overtures will concern the choices made for final number “Next”. Previously a culmination of the piece’s sharp political satire about the damage done to and by Japan due to the events of the play, its edges have been somewhat softened, and we are left with a finale that instead feels like a celebration. Of course, there is plenty to celebrate about Japanese culture, but it does skirt a little close to removing the bite from the musical.
All musical numbers sound spectacular, so the utmost credit to musical supervisor Catherine Jayes, musical director Paul Bogaev and the band. Sometimes, the sound reinforcement does obscure Sondheim’s brilliant lyrics, but this is hard to avoid in a small theatre such as the Menier. Also deserving of the highest praise, the scenery/prop and costume work (Paul Farnsworth, Ayako Maeda respectively) is endlessly inventive and the visual effect created in tandem with Paul Pyant’s lighting design is a necessary and accessible triumph in an otherwise sometimes difficult piece.
The press night for Pacific Overtures fell on the same night as the one-off staged concert of the camp as all heck Diana The Musical. That would have been a fun evening, I’m sure, but I was happy with my choice of evening entertainment. There were laughs, of course, but the true appeal of this production is sweeping you away to a new world where you will learn, think and possibly even shed a tear: not at anything as prosaic as a character’s personal tragedy, but at the often-brutal course of human history. If this sounds less appealing than mindless camp fun, then perhaps this show isn’t for you and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. However, for some, this production of Pacific Overtures will be a revelation – a bold demonstration of what theatre is capable of when stupendously talented creators dare experiment and make something truly singular.
Sondheim's Pacific Overtures
Other reviews...
“Unexpected? Yes, but don’t let that put you off: this musical is a bijou delight. The singing is dramatic or quietly reflective rather than melodious, and the acting broadly comic. But then, this chunk of geo-political history has a funny streak as wide as Tokyo harbour.”
⭐⭐⭐⭐ Nick Curtis, The Evening Standard
“Dissonance is the show’s subject, yet we still crave dramatic coherence, and that remains elusive here. Still, this is a rare chance to see this little-revived show – and to marvel at its glittering fragments.”
⭐⭐⭐ Sam Marlowe, The Stage
“Small but beautifully done… It is thrilling to see this lesser-performed Sondheim piece staged with such zest and imagination. It’s one of the most original and ebullient musicals in town.” ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Arifa Akbar, The Guardian
It’s still hard to warm to Sondheim’s slippery history of Japan… one for Sondheim fans, the Menier devoted and the intellectually curious.”
⭐⭐⭐Dominic Cavendish, The Telegraph
Just as the score is finely textured, there is real beauty in this production’s moments of painterly minimalism.” ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Tom Wicker, Time Out
This review first appeared in Musical Theatre Review and in an extended form in Sondheim: The Magazine, July 2024, pp.10–13
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