Globe-trotting: they may not be as prominent as burgers, Star Wars movies, or Britney Spears. But Broadway musicals have joined the great tide of American culture washing into the far corners of the globe. (Dance Theater).

Everyone has heard about the huge McDonald's in the heart of Moscow, but how many people are aware that Chicago is scheduled to open there in October? Spain went wild when Javier Bardem was nominated for an Oscar last year, but it also swooned over a bus-and-truck tour of 42nd Street. And Germany may happily give avant-gardists like Robert Wilson room to play, but it's also made Starlight Express such a big hit that the show has its own theater and its own exit on the autobahn.

It's not hard to understand why international audiences have embraced these shows: What's not to like? The form itself was born of the welter of immigrant entertainments jostling one another in New York's amusement districts at the turn of the last century--Irish clog dancing, Yiddish sketch comedy, German operetta, Italian opera--and it's varied and lively enough to please a wide variety of tastes. On the other hand, its spirit is steadfastly American, its greatest practitioners have been American, its subjects have often (though not exclusively) reflected American concerns (Damn Yankees would be a very bad bet abroad), and its blithe mix of vulgarity and polish may be the very definition of American style.

The British, of course, bought into it a long time ago, and they have been both copying and competing with the American musical since the 1920s. And it took those two British marketing geniuses, Andrew Lloyd Webber and Cameron Mackintosh, to show Broadway that musicals could become global franchises as well as local hits. But Broadway musicals now reach well beyond the English-speaking world, and you have to wonder how much is being lost in translation. And I don't mean just literally, in the books and lyrics (though it's hard to imagine a terse, tense lyric by Stephen Sondheim keeping its edge in Italian, or an open-throated line like "Oh, what a beautiful mornin'" retaining its flow in Polish).

The fact is, the producers who mount international productions of Broadway hits often come to the United States to cast their shows. Lacking our long-standing musical-comedy tradition, most countries don't provide the kind of interdisciplinary training that produces the all-American singer-dancer-actor. And training aside, cultural biases affect the way performers put over a show. Susan Stroman noted that she had had to drill the reticence out of the British dancers in Trevor Nunn's London production of Oklahoma! And when Scott Taylor, the dance captain of Contact, went to Japan recently to replicate Stroman's choreography for that show, he found the dancers dedicated and technically proficient--but extremely uncomfortable about the overt sexuality of the dancing.

In the end, the dancers overcame their shyness, and the Japanese audience embraced Contact--there were thirteen curtain calls on opening night, Taylor says. The history of Americans in Japan is long and complicated--and of course, there's a musical about that. Pacific Overtures--score by Stephen Sondheim, book by John Weidman, direction by Harold Prince--opened on Broadway in 1976. That was the season of A Chorus Line, and a subtle, cerebral number like "A Bowler Hat" could hardly compete with the show-stopping kick line of "One." But the Sondheim song is a peerless example of how musical theater works and what makes it great.

IT COMES IN ACT TWO OF THE kabuki-style show, after the "black ships" of Commodore Perry have opened Japan to foreigners. Kayama, who has played a crucial role in the events, kneels at his low writing table in his Japanese robes and sings tentatively about his newest acquisition: "It's called a bowler hat." As the verses go on, a chair appears, his table gives way to a Western-style desk, his kimono to a fancy Western suit. In the course of this one number, decades pass; complex, heart-wrenching decisions are made, and a man's destiny--a nation's destiny--takes shape.

Shows have destinies too, and that of Pacific Overtures is taking a most unlikely turn this summer. Kunihiko Hashimoto's Japanese translation, directed and choreographed by Amon Miyamoto for Tokyo's New National Theater in 2000, is playing the States--first this month as part of the Lincoln Center Festival, then in September as part of the Kennedy Center's Sondheim Festival. So see if you can keep this straight: It's a kabuki-style American musical about the Westernization of Japan that's been translated into Japanese, cleared of most of its Kabuki references and given a stark, modernist production. Now it's coming home to the States to play for American audiences. It's called a bowler hat, and it seems anyone can wear it!

Sylviane Gold has written about theater for the Boston Phoenix, The Wall Street Journal, Newsday, The New York Times, and other publications.