Daniel Okrent

In his lifetime, yeah.

Yeah, it's an amazing piece of work.

And of course, that theme returns throughout the show behind other songs for different purposes.

But it haunts the show.

He said harmony was everything.

If you don't have the harmony, forget about the rest of it.

And so he would sit at the keyboard and

And he would just noodle around with his fingers and he would find these harmonies that seemed to fit the theme, the subject matter, and most importantly, the character who was singing the song.

Pacific Overtures is set in the middle of the 19th century.

Think of this as an idea for a Broadway musical.

Let's do a Broadway musical about the opening of Japan to Western commerce in the 1850s.

I mean, it sounds ridiculous for a musical.

I happen to love the show.

It may be my favorite of all the Sondheim shows.

And in this particular scene, the American admiral has come ashore to negotiate

with the Japanese authorities, negotiate with many ships and cannons right behind him.

So it's not the easiest of negotiations.

And in the song, a young boy is in a tree.

He's the someone in the tree who is hearing little bits and pieces of the conversation and wanting to know what's really going on and believing that things that he hears going on may not be the whole story.

It is about an outsider trying to get in