What is history but a sum of the fragments of our personal experience? John Weidman and Stephen Sondheim’s unusual musical Pacific Overtures uses a series of dramatic fragments to tell the story of the westernization of Japan, from the arrival of Commodore Perry’s warships in 1853 to the present day.
The exquisite production I saw in London this week is a joint production of the Menier Chocolate Factory, a small but mighty London theater company, and the Umeda Arts Theater in Japan. This one-act version, presented in Tokyo and Osaka (in Japanese) in early 2023, is now playing in an intimate and elegant setting at the Chocolate Factory.
By presenting us with an unfamiliar style and sound (Sondheim makes good use of parallel fourths and pentatonic scales), the show keep us slightly off balance as we try to find our bearings. We’re watching a musical—a Broadway musical—that puts us in the position of visitors to an unfamiliar Japan. And as Japan westernizes over the course of the show, the music becomes more familiar, more westernized.
And it may give pause to this audience that the most conventionally western-sounding number, occurring very near the end, is the rather sinister “Pretty Lady,” a lovely trio given to three British sailors—who are, however, preying on a young Japanese girl they take to be a geisha.
And the other very western-sounding number is a satirical tour de force in which ambassadors from five European countries present their trading demands. A master of pastiche, Sondheim gives the American, British, Dutch, Russian and French ambassadors music corresponding to their national stereotypes: a Sousa march, Gilbert and Sullivan operetta, a clog dance, a dirge, and a cancan.
And as the very title of the ambassadors’ song–“Please Hello”–suggests, Sondheim and Weidman have inverted a common American theatrical practice: here the Japanese speak refined English, while the foreigners speak a pidgin English.
And then we have “Someone in a Tree,” one of Sondheim’s most profound songs.
As the Reciter (the show’s narrator) explains that we don’t know what was said during the treaty negotiations between the Americans and the Japanese, an old man appears on stage in a wheelchair: “Pardon me, I was there … at the treaty house … there was a tree…”
As the old man carries on a dialogue with his 10-year-old self, a boy perched in a tree above the treaty house, they tell us what they see. Nothing substantial: men … or is it one man? … in gold coats, passing notes, drinking tea. But they insist that their presence is essential to what happened:
[BOY]
And there’s someone in a tree—
[OLD MAN]
—Or the day is incomplete
[OLD MAN & BOY]
Without someone in a tree
Nothing happened here
[OLD MAN]
I am hiding in a tree
[BOY]
I’m a fragment of the day
[OLD MAN & BOY]
If I weren’t, who’s to say
Things would happen here the way
That they happened here?
To complicate the story, a warrior enters to describe what he heard while hidden under the floorboards. Now we have an old man with imperfect memory, a boy who can see but not hear the negotiations, and a man who can hear but not see what is happening. And what the warrior has heard is no more substantial than what the boy saw: floorboards groaning, men shouting. But he, too, is a part of what happened that day:
I’m a part of what I hear
I’m the fragment underneath
I can hear them now!
These people may tell us nothing to merit their inclusion in the history books. But they also tell us everything, that is, they were there. And who’s to say the events would have happened as they did without their presence, their fragmentary presence and understanding?
It’s the fragment, not the day
It’s the pebble, not the stream
It’s the ripple, not the sea
That is happening
Not the building but the beam
Not the garden but the stone
Only cups of tea
And history
And someone in a tree!
What makes the song–and the whole production–so emotionally resonant is that it presents consequential historical events while maintaining that each of us matters. I may not have negotiated or signed a treaty. I may not have understood what was happening. But I was there—and just by being present I was part of the event. I too am part of history.
Very moving, Lisa. Thank you. Annie
Pardon me, I was there, at the show, with Lisa in tow! Love your reviews, but love being at the theater with you even more. — Carrie
This sounds very interesting; perhaps we’ll get a chance to see it stateside.
I know that many years ago I saw a televised, probably taped, performance. The IMDB tells me this wasn’t the original production which, though taped, was only shown in Japan. So it must have been a revival. I’m sure I sought out the broadcast, though not because of Sondheim, who I then really only knew from West Side Story (loved the filmremake) but because of a book I read as a boy—Those of you with long memories will recall a very successful young readers’ American history series called Landmark, published by Random House. These were pretty simplistic narratives, and one of them was titled Commodore Perry and the Opening of Japan. I can imagine a Japanese reader thinking, “forcible opening of Japan.” But the series got my head into alot of various historical topics, at an impressionable age, food for later pursuit.
On Sondheim: It has long been undiscovered country for me, and haven’t found a way in, save for some disparate numbers.