New York City.

The first of Lincoln Center Festival's three productions exploring Asian themes was a reconception of Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman's Pacific Overtures (Avery Fisher Hall, July 9). This Japanese-language production (with English supertitles) featured an all-Japanese cast; directed by Amon Miyamoto, it was first seen at the New National Theatre in Tokyo.

Pacific Overtures depicts Commodore Matthew Perry's 1853 expedition to Japan, an aggressive naval maneuver that forcibly ended Japan's 250 years of isolation and established trade relations between the countries. Sondheim's bold, memorable score frequently jettisons standard Broadway triadic harmonizations, featuring instead Eastern-style accompaniments of a single instrumental line or even just percussion. When the vocal lines flower, and a fuller, more traditional orchestration blossoms, there is a commensurate emotional impact.

Miyamoto's production was spellbinding. Less stylized and decorative than Harold Prince's original, Kabuki-influenced staging (1976), Miyamoto's Pacific Overtures used the less flashy style of Noh drama, allowing one to focus on the impact of history on individual lives. Quickly enough, the audience had become so completely immersed in the Japanese viewpoint that one could almost experience the onslaught of American imperialism from the perspective of another culture.

What was most apparent from this fascinating production, however, was not that the show acquired strength from "de-Americanizing" but that Sondheim and Weidman cut so close to the bone to begin with. The new Japanese version added unmistakable depth, nuance and authenticity, but it was still Pacific Overtures. The music, unchanged except for a reduced orchestration, seemed perfect, and the story made its cultural points about global commercialization versus isolated tradition as it always did. The song "Someone in a Tree" was an excellent metaphor for the entire evening: events can take on new resonance, depending on who tells the story.

An entirely different kind of culture clash is depicted in composer Bright Sheng and playwright David Henry Hwang's marvelously original The Silver River (seen July 18). Based on an ancient Chinese legend, it tells the story of the pure but forbidden love between a Cowherd and a Goddess-Weaver, a mingling of the earthly and the celestial across the divide of the Silver River, better known on earth as the Milky Way. The masterstroke on the part of the writers and director Ong Keng Sen was to have each lover represented onstage by two performers. Thus, the Goddess-Weaver was portrayed by a dancer (Wen-Shuan Yang), as well as by a pipa-player (Hui Li). Similarly, the Cowherd was played by baritone Joseph Kaiser and by flutist David Fedele. The lovers' mutual appeal was symbolized by the virtuosity of their doppelgangers, Fedele and Hui, who played large amounts of challenging music, all from memory. Fully-realized characters, they interacted with the other stage performers, as well as with the impressive four-member pit orchestra (conducted by composer Sheng).

Each character represented a different performing style. Kaiser did the only ...