Making Musical History

Ask any Asian Pacific American even vaguely familiar with musicals, and they’ll be able to sing along with “I enjoy being a girrrl,” recalling endless images of mirror-multiplied Nancy Kwans. As the first musical spectacular with a virtually all-Asian cast, Flower Drum Song by Rodgers & Hammerstein is ingrained in the APA entertainment canon — like it or not.

“It’s loomed so large over my life, and in the lives of other boomer Asian Americans all over the country,” says David Henry Hwang, award-winning playwright of FOB, M. Butterfly and Golden Child. “I remember being a kid and thinking it was so cool. I think it was the only time I saw Asian Americans acting like Americans.”

Hwang never stopped being captivated. Now more than four decades since its debut, Flower Drum Song finally returns to Broadway. The all-new Flower Drum Song, with a completely reconstructed story by Hwang built around Rodgers & Hammerstein’s original music, officially opens October 17, 2002, with what promises to be a star-studded gala of historical proportions.

Cast from the 1961 film version of Flower Drum Song (left to right): Miyoshi Umeki, Nancy Kwan and James Shigeta.

“The original Flower Drum Song was the first Broadway musical ever produced about and starring Asian Americans,” says Hwang. “The second will be our Flower Drum Song. This show has been an important event, either positively or negatively, in the lives of Asian Americans. I wanted to keep it alive, but in a way that we could embrace in 2002, and call our own. The only way I could see to do this was to rewrite it myself.”

Based on a 1957 first novel by Yale-educated C.Y. Lee, the original version of Flower Drum Song was loosely adapted by Oscar Hammerstein II and Joseph Fields. At the core of its story is a love triangle set in San Francisco’s Chinatown: American-born Ta, a privileged young man of means, is in love with leggy dancing girl Linda Low, but his well-meaning aunt and father arrange a marriage for him with Mei-Li, a lovely, fresh-off-the-boat immigrant, who is besotted at first glance with her dashing Chinese American knight.

The show first hit Broadway in 1958, directed and choreographed by the legendary Gene Kelly [now is that a Trivial Pursuit question or what?], in his stage directing debut. It ran at the St. James Theatre for a year-and-a-half for 600 performances, starring Japanese actress Miyoshi Umeki as Mei-Li, Japanese American singer Pat Suzuki as Linda Low and Hawaiian actor Ed Kenney as Ta. Although the original creators attempted to cast Chinese American actors, especially in the key roles, such actors were apparently impossible to find. Small wonder — opportunities for actors of Asian descent were even more limited than they are now, which certainly prevented would-be performers from choosing a life on the stage or in film.

But the show did go on, and in 1960, the London production opened at the Palace Theatre, currently the long-time home of the eternal Les Misérables. The play morphed again into the five-time Oscar-nominated film in 1961, with Umeki reprising her Broadway role as Mei-Li and Nancy Kwan forever immortalized as the irresistible Linda Low. But after a few scattered regional runs, Flower Drum Song fell into virtual obscurity. As the penultimate show from the Rodgers & Hammerstein duo (their swan song being The Sound of Music), Flower Drum Song “has not aged well,” according to Hwang.

Detractors hated it for creating a white-man’s version of Chinatown, filled with misconceptions and stereotypes. Supporters adored it because it was the first time stages, and later the big screen, were filled with Asian-looking faces.

A New Story

Above (left to right): Lea Salonga, Sandra Allen and Jose Llana.

Author C.Y. Lee adds that Hwang’s version “is a little closer to my original novel,” and that he “like[d] all the changes.”

In Hwang’s brave new Chinatown, no longer is Ta a privileged son of a Chinatown scion; instead Ta and his father Wang run a failing Chinese opera house. Mei-Li appears, fresh-off-the-boat, the daughter of Wang’s oldest friend from opera school, who has since fallen victim to the Communist government. Mei-Li herself is a talented opera performer, and is welcomed into the fold with open arms.

While Wang performs to virtually nonexistent audiences, Ta packs in standing-room-only crowds each Friday night when he transforms the theater into a burlesque hall, starring none other than Linda Low.

“In the new version,” says Hwang, “the original clash of cultures becomes a clash of theatrical forms — how traditional theater transforms itself into a nightclub. It’s about assimilation, about the changes that come about from that.”

Meanwhile, while Ta longs for Low, she’s got plans to get out of the ethnic ghetto and go mainstream. Enter Madame Liang, Linda’s agent, who knows how to peddle Orientalism to the masses for massive capital gains. She’s also got the hots for Wang. No, Virginia, this is not your ‘50s Chinatown.

“I don’t see the new Flower Drum Song as correcting stereotypes,” says Hwang. “I have to defend the original — and I think most Asian Americans feel this way, that they basically have a balanced view of Flower Drum Song: that there are good things and bad things about it.”

But for Hwang, the good outweigh the bad: “You have Chinese Americans acting like just Americans. You have an Asian/Asian romance. And you have a strong Asian romantic lead.”

And those are the details that Hwang kept, in addition to the original music — although in a few cases, he went back to older versions of songs that he found in the Library of Congress. Otherwise, “I threw out the old book, and started all new,” he says.

Designer Gregg Barnes’ sketches of the costume designs he created for the new Broadway production. Photos by Marc Bryan-Brown.

Unexpected Gifts

The idea for the all-new Flower Drum Song began as a passing thought in 1996 after Hwang saw the latest revival of The King and I on Broadway, where he noticed the charged chemistry between Lou Diamond Philips as a more down-to-earth, less impervious King and Donna Murphy as Anna. “What could you do to Flower Drum Song?” he asked himself. So he went to the Rodgers & Hammerstein Organization and asked about a creating a new Flower Drum Song. “The estate has a reputation for being strict, but I never encountered that part of the organization,” says Hwang. “Once they decided to let me do this, they decided to let me be an artist. They were making an effort to bring more of an Asian American perspective to the show, and in their minds that meant letting me be me.”

Of course, Hwang’s record of numerous major awards, including a Tony for M. Butterfly and most recently both a Tony nomination and an Obie Award for Golden Child, certainly helped persuade the estate. “Although others with more distinguished careers than mine have had more trouble,” he insists.

Hwang is the first to admit that his first attempt to revise the musical did not exactly … sing. While he is a proven playwright, his experience in musicals was then somewhat limited (how quickly things change). So Ted Chapin, president of the Rodgers & Hammerstein Organization, introduced Hwang to Robert Longbottom, a musical veteran and director/choreographer of the critically acclaimed musical Side Show. “We decided to work on something we both loved and felt should be seen by a modern audience. I loved the score of Flower Drum Song and always believed that, with a revised book, it should be looked at again,” says Longbottom.

“The cast recording was a staple in my home in Maine, where I pride myself on collecting as many show albums as possible,” he adds.

Together with the help of supervising musical director David Chase (music director for the revival of Damn Yankees and dance arranger for the revival of Kiss Me Kate), Flower Drum Song the “revisical” went from New York workshops to Los Angeles, originally headed for a major production at the 2,000-seat Ahmanson Theatre and set to open April 2001. But funding from Singapore-based investors fell through and the show was moved to the more intimate, 750-seat Mark Taper Forum, which proved to be “an unexpected gift,” says Hwang. The new Flower Drum Song opened just over a year ago, on Oct. 1, 2001. And the rest, as they say, is history.

The crowds went wild. So did the critics. The original run sold out quickly — email circulated about scalpers offering pairs of tickets for over $500! — and extended an unheard-of six weeks beyond its initial two-month run. Broadway producers wised up and by November 2001, the word was out — Flower Drum Songswould finally head for Broadway. Now on the eve of opening night, the Great White Way is abuzz with anticipation.

Much of the Taper production moves into the Virginia Theatre intact. Lea Salonga (the original Miss Saigon) and Jose Llana (The King and I, Rent) reprise their roles as Mei-Li and Ta.

“David and Bobby [Longbottom] have taken care that every word, heartbeat and movement is such that none of us in the show steps into the realm of ‘phoniness’. Everything has to be real and true,” says Salonga.

“And the characters, too, have taken on a certain growth over the years,” adds Sandra Allen, who returns as Linda Low. Like her famous predecessor, Nancy Kwan, Allen is hapa of Chinese/white descent.

Jodi Long, who played the role of the new Madame Liang at the Taper, also appears in the Broadway production. Long is actually a Flower Drum Song-veteran from decades past — she appeared in a child’s role with her father in the original version in one of its touring productions. [Another piece of trivia: Alvin Ing, who plays Chin, was a member of the original touring company in 1960, and played Wang in more productions than any other actor.]

Long’s Madame Liang role, ironically, was originated by Juanita Hall — an African American actress who also played the role of another Chinese American, Bloody Mary, in Rodgers & Hammerstein’s South Pacific.

“Having seen the original Broadway production with her in it as a kid, it never occurred to me that she was in any way miscast because she was African American and not Asian. She seemed to fit, and more power to her to be cast,” Long says.

As for the show, Hwang has continued to revise since the original closed in L.A. last January. “Book-wise, I would say maybe 20 percent of the text is rewritten. Similarly, there has been some restaging, the dance numbers have been rethought, we’ve eliminated one song (“The Next Time It Happens”) and restored another (“Sunday”). Overall, I would say that the L.A. production was funny and pleasurable, but we hope we’ve also deepened the show and made it more moving for Broadway.”

Long adds, “The new production has the advantage of hindsight in terms of where we have been as Asian Americans, as well as to where we have come, which informs the story to reach today’s more sophisticated audiences. Of course, with David writing the script, it is now written from an Asian American point of view which is a very good thing.”

Photo by Craig Schwartz.

Broadway and APAs have certainly had a rather checkered past, as Hwang ironically points out “For all my complicated history with Miss Saigon,” smiles Hwang, who wrote Face Value about modern day yellowfacing — think Jonathan Pryce as the Asian Engineer — “I have to say, I’ve benefited a great deal from the cadre of strong Asian American performers” who have at one point or another graced Miss Saigon stages across the world.

But working together here, Hwang’s “triple-threat, talented Asians” who can sing, dance and act, are out to make history. “We’re hoping that maybe this is going to be important in the future. Maybe 20 years from now, it will be something to say that we worked on the original production of the new Flower Drum Song™” Hwang says. “We’re trying to create opportunities for Asian Americans. And we’re striving to change perceptions of Asian Americans in the mainstream.

While the new Flower Drum Song is obviously an APA story first (finally!), it’s undoubtedly also a tale of immigration and assimilation that could belong to any ethnic group living in America.

“As Americans, we all come from somewhere else,” Long reminds us. “No matter where one’s family originally hails from, there are always difficulties assimilating into American culture, what one gives up, what one embraces. I think our new production raises these issues, and if people think of their own heritage and family of immigrants with fondness and gratitude, I think we will have done our job.”

For all his rediscovery, reinvention and reclamation, Hwang’s goals for Flower Drum Song are not far from the original creators: “Actually, I hope to achieve the same thing in 2002 that I believe Rodgers & Hammerstein wanted to achieve in 1958: for audiences to take away a sense that Asian Americans are a vital part of this country’s great social experiment. I would like this Flower Drum Song to make people feel proud to be who they are, particularly Asian Americans.

“And besides, I always wanted to do a showbiz story,” Hwang laughs.

Flower Drum Song opens at the Virginia Theatre on Oct. 17. Check out www.flowerdrumsong.com for information and tickets.