Given the opportunity to attend a live theatrical performance while in Japan, I usually opt for an evening of kabuki (the traditional form of popular theater developed in urban centers beginning in the seventeenth century) or no (an aristocratic dance - drama from the twelfth century favored by the military elite). I have also attended performances of Takarazuka, an all-girl review very similar to the Radio City Music Hall Rocketts, and bunraku, a form of traditional puppetry. In other words, I have usually confined my theatergoing to dramatic forms tied directly to Japanese cultural traditions.

Prior to my departure for this trip, however, while cruising the web for the latest entertainment listings, I found that the Japanese version of Stephen Sondheim's musical "Pacific Overtures" was being performed at the New National Theater in Tokyo during the time of my visit. I checked the performance schedule and discovered that a matinee was included on our one free afternoon in the city! I determined, if circumstances permitted, to work that into my event schedule if at all possible.

I had seen the original Broadway production in New York City in the nineteen-seventies and another production locally at Cain Park In Cleveland Heights several years ago. The original cast album has long been a part of our cassette tape collection (which indicates just how long ago we acquired the recording).

On occasion I have even used several of the musical numbers in my teaching to illustrate, for example, the sense of complacence animating Japan's sense of isolation in the early eighteenth century just prior to the re-arrival of the Imperialist West ("Floating in the Middle of the Sea") or the use of seasonal allusions and word play in Japanese haiku poetry ("Poems").

The production I eventually worked into an already extremely busy day proved to justify my decision to see the musical yet again. Of course, I had already read reports on how well the production had been initially received when mounted as the opening presentation at the grand opening of the New National Theater complex in 2000. Stephen Sondheim himself saw and praised the production, then helped bring it to Lincoln Center in New York City and to the Stephen Sondheim retrospective series recently mounted at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. So I went into the entire experience with high expectations indeed!

And these expectations turned out to be very well placed. My first bit of luck: a young women approached me at the box office with a ticket she wasn't able to use. I purchased it from her and ended up seated Third Row Center!

The play was performed in the smallest of the complex's five theater spaces, The Pit, which held an audience of around three hundred. The thrust stage, steeply raked, consisted of a beautifully-polished, slightly bowed, light maple floor balanced off against a Shinto-like entrance gateway overhead and a backdrop of wooden shoji screens sans paper inserts. The performance floor "floated" above a water-filled container with transparent sides lit from beneath and casting watery shadows across the entire set. A modern hanamichi like those used in kabuki linked the stage to the rear of the auditorium. I was very impressed by the elegant simplicity of the set and looked forward to seeing it in use in the performance to come.

The cast of nineteen also met expectations. Many played multiple roles; several males appeared in female roles (another convention borrowed from kabuki); all handled the multiple demands of musical theater with aplomb. The staging and costumes melded aspects of traditional theater with more contemporary effects. I especially liked the costumes, most of a richly-textured, off-white cloth cut to familiar traditional patterns. The occasional subtle use of color (mostly grays and pastels) stood out in contrast without being overwhelming.

I'm not sure exactly how to categorize the result overall. What does one make of a Japanese production of an American musical about the opening of isolated Japan to contact with the outside world as engineered by the United States? On many levels, given the multiple sources of inspiration and interpretation involved, one could easily label it "postmodern".

On the other hand, I thought it representative of the imaginative capabilities of contemporary Japanese theater moving beyond the conventional into the rich world of the unexpected. No American director, I suspect, could have gotten away with abandoning the expected conventions in handling aspects of "traditional Japanese culture" with the freedom available to a "native" director, yet this innovative aspect represented for me one of the highlights of the New National Theater production.

One final observation: I was struck by how "foreign" mid-nineteenth century Japanese seemed to the very twenty-first century Japanese actors assuming their characteristics and characters. The one or two older actors among the cast captured something of the expected qualities of these historic personages but the younger ones seemed less fully immersed; their body language and stylish haircuts and looser, less controlled movements on stage belied their contemporary origins. They seemed indeed to be "play acting." A cast of non-Japanese or one made up of Japanese-Americans actors, say, would have been at no disadvantage here in the least.

The New National Theater

Another highlight of this first full day in Tokyo came in wandering around the New National Theater complex itself. The site contains an Opera House, a Festival Theater, a Symphony Hall and the smaller performance space, The Pit, where "Pacific Overtures" was performed.

In addition the complex contains a multi-tiered retail complex with lots of restaurants and shops and a thirty story office tower, all set in the midst of beautifully "hardscaped" rock-filled pools and courtyards. I can hardly imagine New York City, say, constructing a similar complex in which to present Japanese drama; yet here in Tokyo there now exists an amazing series of halls devoted to the performance of Western theatrical and musical traditions.