`PACIFIC OVERTURES' USHERS IN NEW ERA.

Byline: Reed Johnson Daily News Staff Writer

Funny how you can lose a battle but still win the war.

It happened in 1853 when Commodore Matthew Perry used gunboat diplomacy to pry open trade with Japan - not dreaming that someday his countrymen would be awash in low-priced Asian imports.

It happened again in the early 1990s, when the creators of ``Miss Saigon'' tapped Englishman Jonathan Pryce to play a Vietnamese pimp, over the outraged protests of many Asian-American actors.

Now, ironically, because of ``Miss Saigon's'' blockbuster success, there are scores of Asian-Americans who know their way around a Broadway stage. No less than four of these seasoned alums have been cast in East West Players' new production of Stephen Sondheim's ``Pacific Overtures,'' and they're one reason why this sly cross-cultural satire is a fitting choice to christen the 32-year-old company's new home.

That home, a beautifully renovated Little Tokyo former church, isn't without drawbacks. Painted in meditative shades of blue, the 240-seat theater sorely lacks wing space. Consequently, Lisa Hashimoto's set design - as richly ornamental as Naomi Yoshida Rodriguez's intricate costumes - looks shoehorned in. At Wednesday's opening-night performance, actors kept bumping into each other and colliding with Hashimoto's centerpiece, a squeaky assemblage of five mobile screens. No doubt these distractions will be quickly remedied.

First produced in 1976, ``Pacific Overtures'' was a show ahead of our own multicultural time. Borrowing elements from traditional Japanese kabuki theater, Sondheim and authors John Weidman and Hugh Wheeler had the idea of concocting a musical about Commodore Perry's encounter with Japan as if it had been penned by a Japanese playwright dabbling in Broadway-musical idiom.

Thus ``Pacific Overtures'' is about cultural artifice and dissonant perspectives. Teetering between the lighthearted mockery of ``The Mikado'' and the hip cynicism of ``Miss Saigon,'' it's a clever, emotionally remote piece of theater that sees Japan's postwar imitation of Western ways as the sincerest form of revenge.

That's a lot of conceptual baggage for a musical to carry. Yet director Tim Dang is highly attuned to Sondheim's peculiar emotional pitch, while his engaging performers generate a surprising amount of soulfulness and warmth. Though the cast's singing skills vary widely, old pros like Deborah Nishimura and Keone Young impart an overall sense of confident purpose and joy.

The most subtly expressive performers are Michael K. Lee and Orville Mendoza, who play flip sides of the Japanese response to Perry's invasion. Lee's Manjiro, a peasant-turned-samurai, personifies cultural resistance, while Mendoza's Kayama epitomizes a semi-reluctant Westernized convert.

These conflicts are beautifully synopsized in Kayaman's Act 2 ode to the price of progress, ``A Bowler Hat,'' a minimalist masterpiece that couldn't be further from the Gilbert and Sullivan-esque pitter-patter of ``Please Hello'' - which in turn couldn't be further from the bawdy slapstick of ``Welcome to Kanagawa,'' sung to the Americans by an overbearing Madam (David Furumoto, wickedly funny in drag) and her Geishas.

Not many modern composers besides Sondheim could imagine that combination. Not many local ensembles could pull it off. East West doesn't quite manage the trick this time, but its ambitions are splendid and its future victories likely to be many.

THE FACTS

What: ``Pacific Overtures.''

Where: East West Players, Union Center for the Arts, 120 N. Judge John Aiso St., downtown Los Angeles.

When: 8 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays, 2 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays; through April 5.

Tickets: $20 to $32.

Our rating: Three Stars.

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Photo

Photo: Alvin Ing, Keone Young and Deborah Nishimura squabble in the Stephen Sondheim musical ``Pacific Overtures.''