YMMV / Pacific Overtures

• Awesome Music: It's a Sondheim musical, naturally this would occur. Special mention goes to "Someone in a Tree", which holds the honor of being the song Sondheim proffers when asked for his favorite song from among his body of work.
  • The emperor, having been literally and metaphorically being a puppet of the Lords throughout the play, breaks away from the puppeteers handles, emerges as a full-bodied being (revealing the Reciter adopting the role), and finally decides to speak for his own.
    • To be fair, that should be attributed more to the bookwriter.
• Fair for Its Day: The show's main creative voices were white, and there are elements that could be considered as reductive or stereotypical, specifically regarding the way women are presented and the downplaying of the impact of World War II on Japan's development. "Chrysanthemum Tea" (which even Sondheim admitted didn't fit with the rest of the show) and "Welcome to Kanagawa" have been criticized in particular. However, the show as a whole was unique for centering the Japanese historical experience in a way unfamiliar to Western audiences. Today, it remains largely admired for blending Japanese and American theatrical styles and portraying Japanese characters with empathy. It is also one of the few major Broadway musicals to be (usually) staged with an all-Asian cast.
• Funny Moments:
  • DON'T TOUCH THE COAT!
  • The Shogun's wife in "Chrysanthemum Tea" constantly makes a shrill singing when the scene transitions. She's often signaled to shut up by the other characters. On her last note, she starts to get bored.
  • The Shogun in "Chrysanthemum Tea" who supposedly dies due to poisoning getting suddenly revived after his mother holds a shortlived eulogy. She then just continues where she's left off in her lecture. When he finally dies for good, they double-take at his body to make sure he's dead and finish the eulogy.
  • A fellow advertising a cart to a Japanese man. The salesman is the Reciter, in kimono and a cowboy hat. Also, the cart pullers are constantly falling in exhaustion in over-the-top ways as other tired cartpullers keep replacing the other. One of them could barely left the cart handles and falls immediately.
  • "Welcome to Kanagawa" is a song about a madam who, the regular girls having fled in the face of foreign invasion, is forced to recruit rough peasant girls and despairs at their lack of elegance and refinery.
  Madam: When a country is in trouble, choices are few, and apart from charging double, what can you do? With my clients off defending, and strangers descending, I find myself depending on the ancient haiku.
  Reciter: The bird from the sea, not knowing pine from bamboo, roots on anything.
  Madam: Exactly.
• Mexicans Love Speedy Gonzales: The original production was broadcast on Japanese TV and it has since been staged in Japanese and produced in Japan. It has also been helmed by Japanese directors who have expressed their love for the musical.
• Retroactive Recognition: Larry Hama, of G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero (Marvel) and Bucky O'Hare fame, was in the original Broadway cast as Williams, a Lord of the South and a Gangster.
• Tear Jerker
  • "The practical bird... having no tree of its own... borrows another..."
  • "And I thought it was the end of the world..." "And it was."
  • "Nippon! The Floating Kingdom! There was a time where foreigners were not welcome here... but that was long ago. A hundred and twenty years. Welcome to Japan."

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