The other side of “Your Turn” is “Next,” the Westernized
rock-and-roll extravaganza with which the show ends.^19 The
entire company is now dressed modern and dancing a furious
account of the Americanization of Japan over a period of 130
years after Perry’s first visit. The jumble of cultures is charged
with the energy of the choreography and the orchestration.
The drive toward new things is taking over from the lyricism
of traditional Japanese culture: so much for “Your Turn.” The
Japanese air attack on Pearl Harbor was represented in the
original production, and still is. For some reason, the ultimate
American response at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was not alluded
to in the original, but it is now, in the major revivals. An explo-
sion blasts the dancers off their feet, and they must rebuild
thedance out of ruin. The four numbers we have been dis-
cussing—“Your Turn,” “Someone in a Tree,” “Lion Dance,”
and “Next”—mirror and supplement the book of the show
even as they interrupt or displace it. They turn the political is-
sues of Japanese/American relationships into harsh pulsations
of song and dance. This show is fierce in its politics.
Coherence and Integration
All the shows we have discussed in this chapter are radical—
not in their politics but in their aesthetics, their penchant for
getting to the roots of the musical and dramatizing the con-
ventions of the form. A Chorus Lineends with a curtain call
that is also the culmination of the book, and brings countless
singers and dancers to the stage. Cabaretends with a hero be-
ginning to write the book on which it could be based, and then
introduces an empty stage where the audience sees itself in the
place of Nazi spectators. Folliesis about showgirls engaged in
putting on numbers in a theatre. Pacific Overturesremoves a
WHAT KIND OF DRAMA IS THIS? 207
(^19) “Next” can also be seen as the counterpart to the opening song, “The Ad-
vantages of Floating in the Middle of the Sea.” See Knapp, The American Mu-
sical and the Formation of National Identity, pp. 277–78. Banfield, Sondheim’s
Broadway Musicals, pp. 249–280, and Horowitz, Sondheim on Music, pp. 155–64,
provide thorough musical analyses.