Review: PACIFIC OVERTURES, Menier Chocolate Factory
Photo credit: Manuel Harlan
Edo period Japan has taken over the Menier Chocolate Factory, with Sondheim's chaotic tale of East meet West, Pacific Overtures. Delivered through a pseudo museum presentation, the piece delves into the almost unwitting westernisation of Japan in the mid-19th Century, with moments of beauty highlighting a key moment in Japanese history that is often ignored by those in the West.
Running at around an hour and 45 minutes, Pacific Overtures paints the picture of a strong and isolationist Japan before American ships forcibly brought that time to an end in 1853. The show itself has been dramatically pared down since its original Broadway production in 1976, reduced to one act, and attempts to tell a quintessentially Japanese story from a Japanese viewpoint. While Sondheim's work on the piece is inventive and ambitious, drawing on Japanese instrumentation and structure, the text, perhaps rightly, is disconnected, like an outsider looking in, leaving many characters feeling paper-thin.
This tale of cultural friction, and the conflict of tradition and progress, is predominantly told through the lens of Tokuro Ohno's Samurai, Kayama, and Joaquin Pedro Valdes' Japanese-born, American educated fisherman, Manjiro, who are pulled in by Saori Oda's Shogun to handle negotiations with the impending American ships. Both Kayama and Manjiro's lives mirror the changes around them and indeed the very tension within their country.
While it suffers from some pacing issues, the piece is beautifully and inventively told. Director Matthew White weaves the sparse book together deftly and his traverse staging invests the audience whole-heartedly in the world of Edo period Japan. Paul Farnsworth's set design has made incredible use of the space, and his use of scale is both enjoyable and surprising. Ayako Maeda's costumes ebb and flow beautifully and Paul Pyant's dramatic use of lighting paints both the serenity of cherry blossom trees and the sharp brutality of samurai combat with dramatic clarity. All of this is anchored with dramatic aplomb by Reciter Jon Chew, a museum guide who frames the piece from start to finish, and whose charismatic ease leads us through the shifting landscape and into the future.
The score itself is lovely, and moments such as ‘Someone in a Tree’, which follows an old man, Masashi Fujimoto, recounting his experience watching the key diplomatic meeting between East and West, through the eyes of his ten year old self, Joy Tan, are not only heartfelt and dramatically inventive, but remind the audience of the personal effects of world altering events.
Pacific Overtures is a beautiful presentation of one of Sondheim's least performed shows, highlighting a tumultuous point in Japanese history, when tradition and progress came to a head.
*** Three stars
Reviewed by: Jack Francis
Pacific Overtures plays at the Menier Chocolate Factory until 24 February 2024, with further information here.