Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman’s Pacific Overtures (which runs Fri/30-June 13 at Brava) is based on an unlikely subject for a musical: the forcible opening of Japan to the Western world in 1853.
Despite his background in musicals and traditional Japanese theater, director Nick Ishimaru wasn’t well-versed the show—which hasn’t been performed in the Bay Area in decades—but the more he learned about it, the more he loved the production. So much so, that he fought to make the show even through the shuttering of its original company.
“This is such a strange thing to say, but it felt so very Japanese,” he told 48hills. “Even though it’s written by two very American guys, there were so many aesthetics in it that they were picking up on, even back in the ’70s, that are very Japanese in their nature,” Ishimaru said.
“Like this idea of space. In Japanese, we call it ma,” he continued. “It sort of means the negative space, the things that are not filled. If you’re looking at Pacific Overtures from a Western musicology perspective, it’s like, ‘Oh, there’s a lot of weird open spaces, or unresolved sections.’ This was them portraying this particularly Japanese aesthetic.”
Originally Ishimaru planned to present the play at 42nd Street Moon, where he works as casting associate, before the production ran into financial difficulties at the venue, but the show still had momentum. Along with Ai Ebashi and Keiko Shimosato Carreiro, his fellow co-founders at Kunoichi Productions, Ishimaru partnered with Brava and Theatre of Yugen to bring the show to Brava.
He says it is the most difficult production he’s ever directed, with challenging harmonies. That’s part of what so attracts him.
“There’s lots of minor dissonant chords, and there’s lots of uneven half step dissonances throughout. Instead of a vocal line that leads up to a big chord, it’s just chord, space, chord, space, chord, space,” he said. “If it wasn’t Sondheim, you’d say the notes were random. We know that it was intentional, but it’s just so challenging to learn.”
Ishimaru loves Sondheim’s work in general, and he says the songs of Pacific Overtures are some of the composer’s most beautiful.
“A song people might know from the show is ‘Someone in a Tree,’ which Sondheim said in his book Finishing the Hat is the closest thing to a perfect song he ever wrote,” Ishimaru said.
“It’s a three-part harmony of these three gentlemen singing this song about reflections of the day. And it has this gorgeous melodic piece overlaid with deeply poetic, existential lyrics about what it means to be part of an event, and how an event is more than just the details that happen in the room.”
PACIFIC OVERTURES runs Fri/30-June 15. Brava! For Women in the Arts, SF. More info here.
