Sondheim’s “Pacific Overtures”: Five Excerpts From a Kabuki Musical
Patrons of Broadway were met with a surprise when, on the evening of January 11, 1976, they packed the Winter Garden Theatre for the opening of Stephen Sondheim’s Pacific Overtures. Sondheim later called the show “the most bizarre and unusual musical ever to be seen in a commercial setting.” (Finishing the Hat) Directed and produced by Hal Prince, with a book by John Weidman, Pacific Overtures chronicles the 1853 American “gunboat diplomacy” of …