For Simeon Den and Kurt Kanazawa, Stephen Sondheim’s genre-expanding musical Pacific Overtures is a family affair. While Den performed in the show’s original 1976 Broadway run, his nephew, Kanazawa, is playing The Fisherman and more in the East West Players (EWP) new production of the innovative work, now extended through Sunday, Dec. 8 at L.A.’s David Henry Hwang Theater. (For details, see below).
Dubbed by composer/lyricist Sondheim as “the most bizarre and unusual musical ever to be seen in a commercial setting,” Pacific Overtures is a concept musical set around Commodore Perry’s 1853 first visit to Japan to open trade relations with isolationist Japan.
Narrated by a Reciter, the story presents the clash of cultures through the lives of two men taken from history, Kayama, a samurai who at first abhors but eventually buys into American ways, and Americanized Manjiro, who returns to Japan only to defend the traditional values of his heritage against Western intrusion.
A Play For These Times
“The show asks what are the choices we make that are important to ourselves as individuals and as a culture?” says director Tim Dang. “It addresses the themes of isolation vs. globalization and what is the price of progress?
“Japan was living in isolation,,” says Dang, “and today we have one presidential candidate who wants to put up walls and stop immigrants, and another who represents collaboration and how we as a world come together.”
The play asks “who owns history,” adds Kanazawa. “The song Someone in a Tree is so accurate. Everybody knows something, but no one knows everything. And everyone wants to know what was talked about. History is so subjective and it’s the victor who colonized who controls the narrative. In the play, Japan is a stand-in for any colonized country.”
An Important Piece
“I knew my uncle had been in the show and I never thought I’d do it,” says Kanazawa. “It’s a privilege and a service to present the show since it still has so much to say that it hasn’t had the opportunity to say. I wish more schools, conservatories, those who claim to be training musical theater actors would do the show. They always bring up the casting. The talent is there, they need to take the risk and do it.”
“It should have been more popular,” says Den. “The play was doing haikus and tackling an advanced subject—a satirical approach to the invasion of Japan. People didn’t know what to make of it.”
Den worked with actors from The King and I and Flower Drum Song, Kanazawa is working with actors from those shows plus Miss Saigon. “We’re both aware of the significance and historical importance of a musical with an all-Asian cast (on Broadway and now other productions),” says Kanazawa, “and why it means so much to Asian Americans. Those other shows are all problematic. Few musicals stand with this show, yes it was written by three white men, but it has a lot of complexity those others don’t provide.”
The Sondheim Effect
“Stephen Sondheim has been an inspiration to me since I was a teenager,” says Dang. “This production is my homage to him, as it’s the best way to celebrate Sondheim’s legacy since his passing.”
He’s been a Sondheim aficionado since he was a teenager. While a freshman at USC at 18, Dang wrote him a letter. “I told him I love the story and Asian themes in Pacific Overtures. And his music was all I listened to. He wrote back: ‘Thanks for your comments. Hope you get to see the show. Steve.’”
“I relish the show’s music and Sondheim’s ability to tell a story though smart and witty lyrics, and the arc of the songs,” says Dang. “Sondheim was ahead of his time and the show was nominated for 10 Tony awards only winning for sets and costumes. It was overwhelmed by A Chorus Line.”
A History
For director Dang, this is his second go-round with Sondheim’s complicated piece and the company’s third production of the show. He directed a version in 1998 when the East West Players opened their new theater. “Very few people saw that, but there’s a long history with the company and the show.”
One of the EWP founders was Mako, the original Reciter in 1976 and who reprised the role for the company in 1979.
After graduation from USC, Dang had a “tough time as an Asian-American getting jobs in Hollywood.” He was recommended to the East West Players where he met Mako and other Pacific Overtures cast members and later joined the troupe.
He himself played the Reciter in a 1991 production in Irvine.
A New Approach
Dang’s aim with his production is to show how the East West Players can authentically present Pacific Overtures and still be true to the vision of the 1976 creative team.
When director John Doyle did his 2017 production, he cut what he said was “fat” and focused the story on the samurai and fisherman, caught up in the Westernization of the East and their journey. He turned a two-and-a half-hour musical into a 90-minute one-act.
In conversation with the play’s book writer John Weidman, Dang presented the idea of a happy medium–a hybrid of the original and Doyle interpretation.
For lovers of the show, Dang is restoring much of the humor, the extended Chrysanthemum Tea sequence and “The Tale of the Courageous King,” which he feels solidifies the characters of the Lords of the South and North and Lord Abe.
Since the story is told from the perspective of the Japanese, the Americans coming into establish trade are seen as demons (a common feature in Kabuki theatre), especially Commodore Perry. Dang has turned the restored Lion Dance into his Demon Dance, complete with horns on his head.
Keeping It Relevant
One of Dang’s goals is to make Kabuki conventions, like stagehands in black changing props and moving scenery, and the play relevant to today’s audiences. “This is a whole new generation and a different time from when the show debuted. We’ve added references to anime, manga, cosplay, Comic-Con, Ash Ketchem and Pokémon, The Harajuku Girls and even climate change.”
The show’s final song Next, is interspersed with statements and facts about Japan’s importance in and influence on the world. “We’re thrilled that John (Weidman) is updating the finale with new lines and local mentions like Shohei Ohtani and Little Tokyo and the gentrification it’s going through,” says Dang.
An Ideal Cast
Jon Jon Briones and Gedde Watanabe head the cast. Briones takes on the Reciter role, while Watanabe, returning to the show after 48 years, will play the Shogun’s Mother/Old Man. He played The Boy/Kanagawa Girl/Priest in the musical’s Broadway debut.
The production also marks a reunion for Briones and Watanabe, who both performed in Dang’s final show as EWP artistic director, La Cage aux Folles, in 2016. Dang saw Briones as Hermes in Hadestown in New York recently and realized he would be a great narrator.
“Most of the cast is new to me and EWP and youthful and really great,” says Dang. They’re being introduced to Sondheim and Kabuki theatre. Everyone has a Western-theatre upbringing and a BFA in theater where they don’t teach Kabuki with its lower center of gravity.
“The original cast had 48 members. We have a cast of 15 playing 55 roles and really quick costume changes. My main advice to them is that as an actor you just need to trust Sondheim. Don’t stress out trying to do too much.”
A Promising Debut
Kanazawa is making his official East West Players production debut with Pacific Overtures, although he’s taken part in their staged readings.
“It’s amazing and especially important to me,” says Kanazawa. He grew up in Los Angeles and remembers the EWP original Silverlake location. “My mother took me to see Cabaret when I was 6. It might not have been appropriate, but it left an impact. So this means a lot to me given the company’s history.”
A Julliard graduate, he went to Italy after New York and spent three years on an Italian soap opera. He returned to L.A. to pursue an acting career and landed a role in Nothing is the Same, a play in Hawaiian Pidgeon English, which he spoke. It was the first play Dang directed after stepping down as EWP artistic director.
Multiple roles
Kanazawa is bringing his trained lyric-baritone voice to Four Black Dragons as the alarmed Fisherman, the first one to spot the approaching warships. “I’m thrilled to be doing the number with one of my best friends, Scott Keiji Takeda, as the Thief. “People haven’t always heard the notes in the song correctly,” says Kanazawa. “There’s a lot of drama in the harmonic shifts. Musical Director Marc Macalintal is taking it seriously and people will hear Four Black Dragons as written.”
Plus, he’s excited to be singing with a 10-piece pit orchestra of eight Western instruments plus a Japanese flute and shamisen.
He’s also understudying Kayama, playing one of the sailors in the deceptively beautiful Pretty Lady and the soothsayer in Chrysanthemum Tea. “The way it’s written, you really wonder if he knows what he’s doing.”
From Hawaii To Broadway
At 17, Den left Hawaii to attend college in Massachusetts where he saw and was inspired by dancer Louis Falco. Seen by a director/choreographer on a Honolulu disco dance floor he was encouraged to move to L.A. and study ballet. He landed a dance part in the 1974 L.A. Civic Light Opera production of The King and I with Ricardo Montalban and Sally Ann Howes.
The choreographer was Yuriko, the original Eliza in The Small House of Uncle Thomas Ballet in the 1951 King and I Broadway debut. She urged him to go to New York where he earned scholarships to Alvin Ailey and Martha Graham schools. Seen as a member of a modern dance company, as an Asian-American, he was asked to audition for Pacific Overtures.
An Education
“In retrospect being in the show was like a master class,” says Den. He remembers “being in the orchestra section at the Winter Garden Theatre behind (costume designer) Florence Klotz and (producer) Hal Prince. And I just sat and listened.”
He recalls the first day of rehearsal and he was in line for the men’s room. He saw who he thought was a janitor coming toward him and they went through the “you go first, no you go first” exchange. “I went back to the rehearsal, and everyone was introducing themselves. It turned out that ‘janitor’ was Stephen Sondheim. He was a legend, and everyone was falling off their seats.”
He was also at cast parties in Boston and Sondheim’s’ New York townhome. “People would get up and sing and he never liked it if they sang Send in the Clowns. He only wanted to hear Glynis Johns.
Playing His Part
As part of the ensemble at 25, “I was not so invested in the significance of the show,” Den says. “But I was aware it had all the leading Asian-American actors of the time.”
He’d not done a show with a six-month rehearsal period “where you do the old version at night and make adjustments and changes during the day. I was concentrating on being a dancer and understudying the Lion Dance.” The number that closes Act 1 with a menacing Commodore Perry, starts as traditional Kabuki selection, and ends as an all-American cakewalk.
In keeping with the Kabuki notion of men playing women, Den was one of the girls in Welcome to Kanagawa. “The costumes were amazing with layers of silk kimonos and obis,” recalls Den. “I remember Florence and Hal talking about a wig that wasn’t working. They scraped a wig that cost $5,000. I was amazed by the money that was spent.”
He’s memorialized on the original cast album as the company member who solos the line “the farmer plants the rice,’ in the opening number, The Advantages of Floating in the Middle of the Sea.
A Family Legacy
Den is not surprised that his nephew is part of this new production. “He’s so talented. I just wish I was doing the show with him.”
Den didn’t save programs, articles or memorabilia from the show. “But I have my memories,” he says. “When my mother passed, I found she had made a scrapbook of my time with Pacific Overtures. I treasure that.”
The David Henry Hwang Theater is in the Union Center of the Arts, 120 Judge John Aiso St. in L.A.’s. Little Tokyo. For tickets, the performance schedule and more information, visit eastwestplayers.org or call 213-625-7000.
Steve Simmons is an accomplished writer and editor who writes about a wide array of topics including entertainment. His successful experience at The Beverly Hills Courier and other publications set the stage for his blog. Contact Steve at steve.simmons0211@gmail.com or 626-788-6734.
