REVIEW: Pacific Overtures (Signature Theater)
Preview: Can you call it a downer ending if it’s a telling of actual history? Leave it to Sondheim to drop an operatic, sophisticated show which villainizes the West on Broadway in the year 1976, the bicentennial of American Independence. Bold. Perhaps this left a mark on the American theatre landscape for the remaining 47 years — Pacific Overtures remains one of his least-performed pieces. Covering a slice of the 19th century from the Perry Expedition to the Meiji Restoration between two conflicting sides of the events from a Japanese point of view, it’s easy to assume Steve here just entered his weaboo era and decided to work on this. Instead, it’s a coherent, biting analysis of Western hegemony. The problem with putting it on a lot of the time is finding a nearly all-male, all-Asian cast to put it on, kabuki-style. Signature Theater has managed to string it all together in an enjoyable way, hopefully making this unique piece of theatre more accessible for DMV audiences.
Acting: Signature managed to grab a smattering of extremely talented Asian actors for this production, which were a joy to see onstage. In fact, I found many of them to have some real pipes! (Quhn-My Luu in particular was a standout). There’s a lot more dialog than singing in this show, so it was sort of nice to see musical actors actually…..act. I feel like too many a time you’re just watching them talk before they get into a song, but in this case I found it inverse (not to say the songs were bad, this was quintessentially Sondheim). A fun element to this show is its use of men being required to play female roles. And while this is less stringent than it used to be, it’s still prominent and you get these super entertaining numbers like “Chrysanthemum Tea”. It’s a good group of actors putting on a show that demands a certain level of talent to both act and perform the unique score. 7/10
Production: Staging ebbs and flows but never quite touches its potential, getting close in only a few scenes. The stage is an unpolished white, featuring a thrust arrangement and an underutilized rotating stage in the center. At the rear is a curtained box where some elements are revealed or introduced - hard to give a lot of info here unfortunately, since my seats were far stage left and it was obscured. On the upper level, there is a large taiko drum (played by the incredible Angie Benson), and a bonsai tree. The fight choreography shows its quality during the final scenes. Helen Q. Huang is the absolute star of the tech for this production. Her costumes, paying wonderful homage to traditional Japanese attire of the time, are colorful and ornate, very pleasing to the eye! The best parts are the puppetry. Her handheld puppets are cozy and thoughtful, while her caricatures of Western powers are absolutely scene stealing. Lighting design is only taken advantage of during “Please Hello” and the finale, which only led me to think about how much more it could have been utilized during other parts of the show. There were times when I felt like I was at a Tony-winning theatre, and others where I felt like I was at a high school. 6/10
Book/Music: Don’t let the hymnal Japanese singing from the opening seconds decieve you. The minute the percussion hits, you are well aware that this is a Stephen Sondheim score. Hell, if you listen closely, you can hear plenty of exact motifs that show up in later shows and from previous ones. Taking its inspiration from ancient Japanese songwriting technique, it’s a very curious mix of East and West that I was surprised worked as well as it did. Many of these songs were quite good in fact, and I wonder why they aren’t popular within the Sondheim fandom. “Hello Please”, the over-the-top pastiche of the forced opening of Japan by the West to open Act II, was a total highlight, full of hilarity and signature Sondheim rapped lyrics. “Someone in a Tree”, the penultimate number was a cleverly haunting song that totally makes sense as one of his favorite compositions ever. The two characters we focus on, Manjiro and Kayama, are written off of each other well as representations of Japan’s future. In fact, the way they sort of orbit around their relationship to eventually mirror who they once were is such a good piece of writing that took me by surprise until I reflected on the plot later while writing this. It all made sense. Remember when I said this was a “downer ending”? This is in reference to the obvious end, where the emperor removes his traditional layers to reveal a modern imperial outfit. You spend the entire show growing to appreciate their local culture, watching them literally die to defend it, only for the one background character with all the power to suddenly rip it all away. It’s a tragic turn, but expected, and just goes to show how well written it is. If it weren’t for the solid acting, I can see how this plot could fall flat, but luckily it holds up as the strongest element of the production. 8/10
VisDev: Lots to be desired, unfortunately. Signature is good at sticking with their sans-serif-oriented typeface, which is minimal and easy to read. But unfortunately, it leaves much of their advertising capabilities feeling rather cheap. The primary poster for this show features one of the protagonists in a suit, holding a samurai sword, with the country of Japan overlaid on his torso. The cool thing about this, though, is the negative space created by the overlapping elements revealing the same person in the same pose, but with a more traditional outfit. It’s a bit of basic Photoshoppery, but fun and to the point. Pre-show staging also leaves much to be desired. It’s just the thrust rotating stage and a curtained box towards the back. In fact, the only thing that indicates “Japan” is the large taiko drum and bonsai on the upper level, largely obscured if you’re sitting in any of the stage left or right sections. 4/10
Verdict: A solid cast, fun puppetry, and an entertaining book can only do so much to make up for underwhelming technical elements elsewhere.
