Pacific Overtures Reviews

"This Sondheim revival is a wonderful revelation"

"Unexpected? Yes, but don't let that put you off: this musical is a bijou delight"

"This is the Stephen Sondheim musical I least expected to see revived, let alone as nimbly as in this thrilling co-production between the Menier and Osaka’s Umeda Arts Theater."

"This is the chamber version with just ten musical numbers that Sondheim and Weidman created with Hugh Wheeler in 2017 and it bowls merrily along."

"... The music is beautifully intricate, the lyrics wittily wrought to fit the cadences of formal Japanese address or rude Western pidgin. White’s production, unrolling like a scroll on a traverse stage, is exquisitely designed by Paul Farnsworth (set) and Ayako Maeda (costumes), and includes the prow of a battleship rendered in silk. 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."

"Small Sondheim is beautifully done"

"Co-production with Osaka company brings 1976 study of American imperialism arriving in Japan to subtle, funny life"

"When Stephen Sondheim’s 1976 musical premiered on Broadway, it was staged in grand kabuki style. By contrast, this Umeda Arts Theater co-production, already mounted in Tokyo and Osaka, goes small – and beautiful."

"A snug traverse stage never looks tight, but is rammed with fast, funny theatricality. The music is a pleasure, too, and creates an almost physical immersion in such an intimate space, with hammering drums in moments of high drama."

"Arguably a show about the US’s aggressive cultural imperialism, this production does more than show us this alone, and there are charges of “barbarianism” from both sides."

"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."

"Nimble, imaginative Anglo-Japanese take on Sondheim’s screechingly high concept musical about the Westernisation of Japan"

"The show treads the line between exaggeration and seriousness pretty nimbly. The pared-down book brings into focus the tragedy of friends Kayama and Manjiro, whose differing reactions to the infiltration of Western customs tears them violently apart. And just as the score is finely textured, there is real beauty in this production’s moments of painterly minimalism."

"... this production tackles the very specific story it’s telling with imagination and wit. It’s a visually arresting, unique musical that thrives on the skill of the ensemble cast that brings its cross-currents to life."

"White’s production balances real feeling with stylisation and also with snappy satire. “Please Hello” is deliciously staged, with representatives from western countries prancing up to the bewildered Shogun to deliver absurd versions of their respective national dances (wonderful choreography from Ashley Nottingham). It’s crisply, wittily delivered by a fine cast on Paul Farnsworth’s simple set of burnished gold curls and sliding screens, using the intimate space to tell a rich and resonant story nimbly."

"A great Sondheim musical about Japan"

"... even if you’re a Sondheim sceptic (I’ll admit that I began to feel like one during Terry Gilliam’s revival of Into the Woods) you’ll be startled to see just how entertaining — as well as thought-provoking — this stripped-down collaboration with the Osaka-based Umeda Arts Theater turns out to be. Based on the version that the composer and his book writer John Weidman devised in 2017, Matthew White’s production possesses the tantalising, ethereal beauty of scenes sketched on a vase."

"They glow in the confined space of the Menier, the mixture of geopolitics, romance and avarice unfolding on a traverse set stunningly embellished by the designer Paul Farnsworth."

"The haunting music creates common ground between Sondheim’s trademark epigrammatic style and traditional Japanese melodies."

"A witty and innovative musical in mid-19th century Japan"

"The musical fusion of literate Anglo lyrics and non-Western instrumentation is fascinating, as is the choreography influenced by the Kabuki classical form of theatre."

"Utilising a largely Asian cast, Matthew White’s production is superbly designed by Paul Farnsworth on a traverse stage along which screens and theatre furniture are wheeled speedily on and off."

"... it is a witty and innovative musical with some late-flowering swordplay to indicate that culture clashes sometimes went beyond civilised negotiation."

It’s still hard to warm to Sondheim’s slippery history of Japan"

"Set in the second half of the 19th century, this 1976 work is one for Sondheim fans, the Menier devoted and the intellectually curious"

"... this staging of Pacific Overtures completes a triptych of its revivals of ambitious Sondheim shows regarded as problematic – Assassins and Road Show (each featuring a book by John Weidman)."

"Nowadays you might label the show a musical TED talk; allusions to Brecht are oft bandied about. The piece is too playful to be dismissed as numbingly didactic. What it is, though, is emotionally arid and it’s attended by anxiety around authenticity."

"The trick up the kimono sleeve of Matthew White’s production is that it’s co-produced with Umeda Arts Theatre, Japan, and boasts a predominantly Japanese and British East Asian cast...That validity lends a confidence to the staging, a 115-minute affair that moves at pace"

"There’s much admirable detail here – the use of Japanese puppetry, integration of origami and video wizardry, and you can’t fault the cast in bearing, or vocal execution."

"Moments to marvel at in Sondheim's problematic musical"

"Rarely revived Sondheim musical has a fragmented brilliance and beauty"

"There are sequences in this 1976 musical by Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman that are breathtakingly beautiful. There’s also much else that, from a 21st-century perspective, looks crude and – ironically, given the subject matter – culturally appropriative."

"The cuts mean the loss of some terrific – if dramatically expendable – music, and some clumsy dialogue. What’s left, under Matthew White’s direction, is succinct almost to the point of fragility, characters and events conjured in sparse strokes, as if in a delicate woodcut or on a painted screen – often exquisite, almost always two-dimensional."

"The score sounds wonderful, even if the singing is variable, and individual numbers are self-contained masterpieces."

"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."

"Stephen Sondheim’s rarely revived Pacific Overtures, first seen on Broadway in 1976, is an intriguing thing: irradiated by the brilliance of its composer-lyricist – and undermined by it."

"Paul Farnsworth’s set and Ayako Maeda’s costumes are by turn glittering, austere and frisky: simple, beak-like wooden prows; the shogun in spiky gold; sliding screens; boats sitting on hats; flickering, scarlet-flecked parasols."

"The trouble is an exquisite one. Several of Sondheim’s numbers capture the idea of merging traditions – and of imperialism – so perfectly that there is little need for the surrounding dialogue and laying out of chronology."