"Pacific Overtures" isn't one of Stephen Sondheim's most famous musicals, but the story it tells -- of the arrival of Commodore Matthew Perry's Black Ships in July 1853 and the opening of Japan to the West -- has been updated and given a new twist by a Japanese director and cast.
Playing at the New National Theatre of Tokyo until Oct. 31, "Pacific Overtures" made its Broadway debut in 1976. Based on a book by John Weidman, the musical was given an exaggerated, kabuki-style staging by director Harold Prince. Many Japanese critics regarded it as a work of pure "orientalism," presenting an exotic Japan as pictured by the American imagination.
Interested in approaching Sondheim's musical from a Japanese point of view, Amon Miyamoto directed a new version that was staged at the New National Theatre in October 2000, using an excellent Japanese translation by Kunihiko Hashimoto. In contrast to the lavish kabuki style used by Prince, Miyamoto adopted the highly restrained techniques of the noh theater, an approach that seemed to bring out new depths in the work. He also presented the characters with greater sympathy, bringing them vibrantly to life instead of allowing them to remain colorful caricatures. Miyamoto confides that by stripping all the superfluous aspects of the 1976 version, he was able to express more eloquently what Sondheim and Weidman had aimed to create.