‘Arrabal’ explores legacy of Argentina’s brutal military regime
An East Asian history concentrator while at Harvard, John Weidman ’68 never imagined that his knowledge of modern Japan would prep him for Broadway. But an idea he had for a play about Commodore Matthew Perry’s 1853 excursion to the island nation struck a chord with theater producer Hal Prince, who enlisted legendary composer Stephen Sondheim. The result became the Tony Award-winning musical “Pacific Overtures.” “I thought: What do I know about that other people don’t? East Asian history,” Weidman recalled recently while discussing the origin of that 1976 success in the lobby of the Loeb Drama Center during a rehearsal break for the American Repertory Theater’s (A.R.T.) tango-infused show “Arrabal,” for which he wrote the book. Life can provide zigzags, a fact that Weidman knows better than most. After Harvard, he attended Yale Law School but then realized he “didn’t want to be a lawyer.” Since he was both a longtime baseball...