PACIFICOVERTURtS By Stephen Sondheim andJohnWeidman Studio 54 254 West 54th Street 212.719.1300 UNDEREASTERNEYES When a Japanese director meets a Sondheim, musical, the results are so East they're West A Western show with Eastern manners, Pacific Overtures has...

An issue devoted to opera in California might suggest an issue devoted to opera in San Francisco. The Bay City, after all, has long been famous as a town where opera matters in a serious way. But as the OPERA NEWS editorial staff commenced...

In the following essay, Sutcliffe maintains that Pacific Overtures is “the most unusual of all Sondheim's musicals.”

In the following review of Pacific Overtures, Pang examines Sondheim's commentary on the Western cultural invasion of Japan, focusing on his use of cultural satire and juxtaposition of Japanese tradition with modernism.

The translation of a culture—and a translation of a translation at that—this is only the beginning of the beguiling and sometimes bewildering complexities of the new musical "Pacific Overtures." … It is a very serious, almost inordinately ambitious musical, and as such is deserving of equally serious attention. It is the story of what happened when "four black ships" came to "a land of changeless order." It is all about the Westernization of Jap...