Great show, great cast, just go...
Our last show in November 2023 is Pacific Overtures at the Menier.
This is the 2017 reworking of Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman’s 1976 musical play and this is the first UK outing for this revised version.
Telling the story of the arrival of, firstly the Americans, in 1853 (Commodore Perry), through to the Meiji Restoration this is a largely South Asian (indeed Japanese) cast – via the Umeda Arts Theatre and is excellently directed by Matthew White. The setting (The Menier is set as a traverse with two banks of seating) is appropriately austere, with touches of beauty, as Japanese interiors and exteriors, the costumes (of the Japanese) are broadly authentic for the period (the costumes of the western 'invading' captains are imagined, satirically, through Japanese eyes).
The staging and choreography (particularly 'japanese' movement, influenced by Noh and Kabuki styles, but not excessively) are exemplary and wonderfully disciplined and there i
s much quiet humour – particularly from the acting of the principals – Jon Chew as the narrator/ Meiji Emperor; Saori Oda as both the Shogun and a Madame and Takuro Ohno as the samurai Kayama in particular. (Unlike traditional Japanese theatre, women play men, as well as men playing women)
The music, which is partially Japanese atonal is well played but the cast are not opera singers but actors, and at times it shows.
It’s a gre
at show, running to February; go if you can.
[The reference to Pacific Overtures comes from Commodore Perry’s notes – where he is told to make ‘pacific (i.e. peaceful) overtures’ to the Japanese, but its second meaning (the start of the West’s move into the Pacific) is also intended.]