A Conversation with Joaquin Pedro Valdes
We speak to Joaquin Pedro Valdes about Pacific Overtures, The Baker's Wife, and more...
It was a real pleasure to speak to acclaimed actor Joaquin Pedro Valdes, who recently starred as Manjiro in the phenomenal Menier Chocolate Factory production of Pacific Overtures. Joaquin’s other recent roles include Light Yagami in the English-language premiere of Death Note: The Musical and Ram Sweeney in Heathers. We spoke about Pacific Overtures, Joaquin’s own route into Sondheim’s work, and the upcoming London production of The Baker’s Wife, in which he will star as Dominique. Our conversation begins below:
I’d love to begin by asking about your personal route into Sondheim’s work. What was your relationship with it like as you were growing up?
Really deep. I started my professional career as a theater actor at 10 years old in Manila, and we’re big musical theater fans in Manila. I remember the very first Sondheim I watched as an 11-year-old was Passion—and we weren’t allowed to watch Passion. It was restricted to adults. And I remember sneaking into the theater, because I was working on another show at that time, and watching it again and again. I remember not understanding everything, but being blown away by the opening scene, and eventually just really falling in love with that score.
And of course Into the Woods was another big one for me, and I finally got a chance to be in it. There was a big revival that was happening in Manila: an all-star cast, really small ensemble, everybody at the top of their game. I played Jack in that really small, almost chamber-like revival of Into the Woods. It was really special. So, that was my intro into actually doing Sondheim. It’s one thing to listen and appreciate Sondheim—it’s another thing to do it. And it’s almost like you’re in a special club when you’ve actually done a Sondheim, because the learning, the journeying, the process of just really dissecting the character and the score is just a unique experience.
I love that the first show you fell in love with was Passion—I’d imagine that’s a lot less common a route into his work than, say, Sweeney Todd.
I guess there’s a sense memory to it as well, because I was young and snuck into the theater and watched it so many times. It just brought me into this world of Sondheim, and I loved it. I still listen to it, and I think it’s one of his deepest and most profound scores.
It occurs to me that Pacific Overtures is a show which, like Passion, there have been fewer opportunities for audiences to actually experience in person than certain other Sondheim shows. Before you auditioned for it, was it a musical you knew well?
I’ll be honest: I didn’t really know the Sondheim/Weidman works. I don’t really know Road Show, I don’t know Assassins very well, and I didn’t know Pacific Overtures! They were so ahead of their time when they did the pro shot of it back in the seventies. I saw some clips of it and didn’t fully understand it. I didn’t easily recognize the musical theater aspects of it—and I just realized that back then, my musical theater maturity was very young. They were so far ahead of their time. So Pacific Overtures was one of those cases of “I want to do it because it’s a Sondheim,” but honestly, I had not too much knowledge beyond that. And so when I got the opportunity to audition for it, I was really treating it as if it was brand new. Matt White, our director at the Menier, and Cathy Jayes, our supervisor, were really extracting it as if it was being done for the first time, which was really, really lovely.
I think what Hal Prince was doing with Pacific Overtures originally was he was trying to incorporate a Japanese theatrical style and dramaturgy into an already very offbeat, non-traditional text, which John Weidman and Stephen Sondheim wrote. So you add two really obscure ingredients together, and people are not necessarily ready for it. But I think what Matt White did was he removed that, and instead said, “We’re not going to try and make it Japanese theater. We’re just going to try to tell a story about Japan.” And I think going back to the text of it, going back to the bare bones of it, really made all of the profundities and all of the genius of it come out. And what I loved about this particular production was Matt focused on Kayama and Manjiro as the two anchors of the story. It’s episodic, so there are characters whose arcs you don’t really follow. But what Matt wanted to do as much as possible was try to anchor it on these two friends, as a metaphor for Japan in two faces, going through the journeys of these two men. I thought that was really, really brilliant, and I hope that came across.
And it’s quite beautiful, because as an actor I’m looking for an access point. I’m not Japanese, although I love Japan. I’ve been there a couple of times. I did a show there, was there for a month, and me and my wife just absolutely loved Japan and the culture. When I decided to be an actor full-time, we did a holiday in Japan. We were watching all of this traditional Japanese theater, and I was just in tears. Look at the depth of the culture... And Takuro Ohno, who played Kayama in Pacific Overtures, we became really, really good friends outside of the show. We’re still in touch, and he’s in Tokyo now.
And I think what was beautiful about it is my access point as an actor was that Manjiro was Americanized. He was Westernized. He grew up in the States, and he learned everything that he knows in the American way. And he goes back to Japan thinking that he’s going to help Japan by being a little bit more open to the Western ways. Japan at that time, of course, was very closed, and that’s embodied by Kayama. And then the nuance of it is, as I’m trying to make Japan more Western, or at least open to the idea of the West, I fall in love with the traditions and the culture of Japan. And the inverse happens with Kayama: having started by being closed and protective of the traditions of Japan, he realizes through his friend Manjiro the dealings of the West, and starts to fall in love with the ways of the West. There’s no right or wrong in it, and this is what’s beautiful about the text. It’s so complex and so nuanced that it’s human. And we see now the triumph and the pitfall of what history brings. We’re not trying to change history; we’re just looking at it from what we know now, and seeing history as it happened.
And you’re returning to the Menier very soon for The Baker’s Wife! From your point of view, is there something particularly special about that space? I know it can be configured in so many different ways, but however you set it up, it’s such an intimate experience for audience members and actors alike. Does it feel tangibly different to perform there than in the larger spaces you’ve worked in?
It’s ironically more freeing for me, because there’s absolutely no choice but to live in these characters. Everybody’s so close. Everybody is there. You guys as the audience will be able to sniff out anything that’s artificial or inauthentic, so we just can’t drop the ball as actors. For you guys to experience the whole of the text, we need to just be living in it. It needs to be coming out of our pores. And I love that. It’s so freeing, because it’s no longer about all of the surface-level elements of a show. Of course they are all there: how beautiful the music is, how well you sing it, and so on. But I think there’s an aspect in the Menier, and in a space that intimate, where you need to be living in it, because you’ll be caught out if you’re faking it. You can’t be faking it. And I love it, because it demands a certain kind of actor to be in that space, and it demands a certain kind of commitment to the text and to the roles.
We’re speaking in late May, and The Baker’s Wife opens on July 6th. Where in the process are you currently with that show?
I’ve had a couple of chats with Gordon [Greenberg, director of The Baker’s Wife], who’s opening a show in Taipei, and he’s just opened a show on Broadway too, so he’s a very busy director. But we had a couple of Zoom chats, which was really nice. He auditioned me as well. I’ve been doing my own deep dives into the text of the show, because we don’t start rehearsals until a couple of weeks from now. So yeah, I’m trying to get in the world of The Baker’s Wife, of this idyllic little café in the middle of nowhere in France—and how the whole village is changed because of a scandal. It’s set in the 1930s, which is really lovely. There’s something about telling stories that are coming from a simpler time, when you don’t have a lot of access to what you want right now. We live in times where if we want information, we have it in the palm of our hands. If we want something, we can just order it and it will be delivered to us. At that time, you needed to wait—and there was more value in the waiting. There was more value in the silences. There was more value in what everyone contributed to make a village happy. Bread in particular, for this village, was a big deal. And if the baker, who was the master at making bread, was going through something, it affected the entire village. It’s nice to look at a story like that. I saw the seating configuration we’re using at the Menier, and it’s going to be a little bit immersive… The action’s going to happen right in the middle of everyone. It’s going to be so exciting. And the cast is stacked! I’m a fan of so many people in this cast—I’ve been watching their shows as a theater fan, both straight drama and musicals, and I’m just so humbled to be part of it.
And you’re also part of this year’s Stephen Sondheim Society Student Performer of the Year event. You tweeted so beautifully about it, saying that “not a day goes by” when you don’t think about his lyrics and his work. How does it feel to be part of SSSSPOTY as a guest performer?
It feels really surreal, because as a musical theater fan, you have little boxes that you want to tick. As a musical theater practitioner, you have even more boxes that you want to tick. And one of them for me was to be in a Sondheim, and to be recognized as a Sondheim actor. In the theater world, there’s a handful of actors that are really known for doing Sondheim, and doing Sondheim well. And I’ve just done one in London! But I’m so glad that the Sondheim Society has embraced me. If I were a student, I would definitely want to be up for a SSSSPOTY. I get to participate in that, and facilitate seeing others’ respect and love for Sondheim to flourish. I’m a guest singer, but I get to see all of these amazing students that are vying for a title—but all of them have already won. The calibre of judges, the panel that selected them, hosted by Bonnie Langford… It’s a pretty cool show to be in, and I’m very, very glad. And I get to do my very first Sondheim song! I’m going to be singing “Giants in the Sky,” and I’m very excited for that.