Beautifully conceived by an ambitious, driven director and artfully brought to life by a stellar cast of actors, Pacific Overtures—the musical by Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman—seems, at first, an unlikely choice for the sophomore season of Nashville’s Blackbird Theater. Yet when you consider the company’s prior offerings (which include Twilight of the Gods, an original play by Wes Driver and Greg Greene, the company’s co-founders; Tom Stoppard’s intellectually compelling Arcadia; and G.K. Chesterton’s rarely produced Magic), it fits perfectly into the Blackbird canon. And, like those earlier productions, Pacific Overtures is another artistic triumph, the realization of a long-held dream by Greene (who co-directs with Driver) to bring his favorite work for musical theater to the stage.
It’s a sumptuously designed rendering of Sondheim and Weidman’s musical treatise on the efforts of Westerners—exemplified by the Americans’ rather condescending, “manifest destiny” sense of entitlement, not to mention the British, French, Russian and Dutch entreaties that followed those initial American overtures— to wage economic warfare on the quietly isolationist “floating empire” of Japan. Resolute, though somehow expansive, in his vision for the piece, Greene is admirably aided and abetted by a talented ensemble of actors and theater artisans in creating a memorable production that is accessible to all audience members, regardless of their grasp of the history of the world during the 1850s.
Much credit is due music director Ben Van Diepen, whose 13-member orchestra creates a beautiful sound with their performance of yet another stunning Sondheim score that is inspired by Japanese musical traditions transformed by the more expected idiom of American musical theater composition. The result is a lushly composed score that bridges the gap between chamber musical and a full-out musical comedy, the type of which audiences may never have seen before or since.
The production’s visual aesthetic is nothing short of stunning: Larry Brown’s multi-purpose set, which utilizes traditional screens painted to represent a variety of pictures and settings, provides the ideal backdrop for the play’s action, while Hannah Schmidt’s exquisite evocation of traditional Japanese garb clothes the actors while creating a palpable sense of time and place. Aria Darling’s wig and makeup design provide an essential element to the production design, allowing the actors to morph almost seamlessly into the 19th Century Nippon from their usual 21st Century America personas. Finally, the evocative lighting design of David Hardy and Stephen Moss bathes the set with a bevy of gorgeous colors, directing the audience’s attention when needed and, at all times, underscoring the evolving action and tone of the piece.
The actors breathe life into the stage-bound characters found in Weidman’s cleverly worded and winningly crafted book, and their stories are given their due through the challenging music and lyrics (filled with internal rhyme schemes and ethereal melodies) provided by Sondheim. Capturing the absurdity of Japanese society’s naivete and the grasping, demanding nature of Western society succinctly, Pacific Overtures is not the overly serious intellectual exercise you might be expecting. Rather, it offers a completely entertaining and amazingly charming discourse on East/West relations that resonates today.
The story itself is easy-to-follow, despite its structure—it’s presented as the Japanese imagining of how American musical theater would present the story—and it is filled with rather grandiose notions of Western exceptionalism (American hubris is dwarfed by that of the European nations vying for the Japanese markets), which are brought significantly down to earth by the personal story of two unlikely friends, the samurai Kayama Yesaemon and the fisherman Manjiro (Michael Slayton and Tyson Laemmel, respectively).
The plot focuses on American efforts to penetrate the steely reserve of the Japanese sense of decorum and the belief that the ground, on which the island nation is built, is sacred. With the arrival of Commodore Matthew Calbraith Perry (James Rudolph cuts quite a dashing figure as the lion-maned American) and flotilla of four ships, demanding that the Emperor receive a letter from President Millard Fillmore, Kayama Yesaemon is pressed into service by the Shogun’s councilors to devise a plan to repel American entreaties and repudiate the “barbarians” before they set foot on that sacred ground (which is particularly vital due to the fact that sacred law prohibits foreigners from setting foot on Japanese real estate). Kayama saves the life of Minjaro (the fisherman had violated two Imperial edicts by leaving Japan when his boat was lost at sea and then returning to his homeland after several years in Massachusetts after he was saved by American seamen), pushing him to impersonate a high-ranking official in hopes of sending the Americans on their way.
