Flower Drum’s New Song
November 3, 2008
Nancy Kwan and David Henry Hwang to celebrate 50th anniversary of ‘Flower Drum Song’ in San Jose, Calif.
Fifty years after the Broadway audiences first took a stroll down the avenue — Grant Avenue — San Jose’s American Musical Theatre is staging a revised version of the classic Rodgers and Hammerstein musical Flower Drum Song.
To commemorate the anniversary, actress Nancy Kwan, star of the 1961 film, will appear with playwright David Henry Hwang at a November 9 benefit for three Asian American organizations: Asian Americans for Community Involvement, Contemporary Asian Theater Scene and the Japanese Cultural and Community Center of Northern California.
Although Hwang wrote the new production, he was not always an enthusiastic fan.
“As a kid, when I first saw it on TV, I was inspired to see a virtually all-Asian cast, telling an American story and singing and dancing to great music,” Hwang says in a recent interview. “By the time I got to college and began to get involved in the growing Asian American scene, I focused on some of its creaky cultural representations and slips into stereotype. Later, as a professional playwright, I discovered its virtue of remaining to this day the only Broadway musical ever written about Asian Americans, as opposed to root-culture Asians.”
Kwan did not appear in the Broadway musical but was chosen to star in the film following a successful big screen debut of The World of Suzie Wong in the 1960s. Kwan, who began her career as a dancer, says she loved playing the role of the feisty, sexy Linda Lo in Flower Drum Song as it allowed her to display her talent; her most memorable moment was when Fred Astaire visited the set and watched her dance.
“The film did very well at the box office, and I was proud to be in the first mainstream film made at a major film studio with an all Asian cast,” Kwan says.
And it was a hit with Asian American audiences. “I think a lot of Chinese filmgoers liked it because I got a lot of free meals, being welcomed at Chinese restaurants,” she recalls, laughing.
Hwang kept most of the original score but wrote an almost entirely new script. He says that although Flower Drum Song had been extremely successful when first introduced in the 1950s and early 1960s, it had become dated after the Civil Rights Movement redefined the viability of stereotypical portrayals of Asian American communities. So Hwang went back to the beginning.
“I wanted to tell a story reflecting more of the spirit of C.Y. Lee’s novel, on which the musical was based, which was much more bittersweet about both the gains and the pains of immigration and assimilation,” Hwang explains.
Hwang’s reworking opened on Broadway in 2002 with an all-Asian cast, as opposed to the original stage production, which had many non-Asians play Chinese characters in leading roles. It won him his third Tony nomination (he won in 1988 for M. Butterfly and was nominated in 1998 for Golden Child).
Hwang’s next project is a new musical titled Bruce Lee, Journey to the West, which will incorporate Lee’s biography with elements of the Monkey King tale.
Kwan, meanwhile, recently completed a mystery novel titled Jade Investigator, developed the concept for an instructional Tai Chi videotape, and is currently working on a documentary about her life.
Hwang hopes his new version of Flower Drum Song will speak to the evolving racial attitudes and identities of Asian American audiences. “For people my age and younger, China and Asian Americans are not nearly as foreign as they used to be,” he says. “Much of the theatre-going audience has traveled to Asia or at least knows some Asian Americans. To Americans today, chop suey, for instance, is a relic of the past, and not even known about now. Therefore, a new and relevant Flower Drum Song needs to jibe authentically with the more authentic knowledge audiences bring to the theatre today.”
Flower Drum Song runs from through Nov. 9 at the San Jose Center of the Performing Arts.
Asian Americans for Community Involvement, Contemporary Asian Theater Scene, and the Japanese Cultural and Community Center of Northern America will host two shows (1:00 p.m. matinee and 6:30 p.m. evening performances) of Flower Drum Song on Nov. 9 with a special VIP Cast A reception between the shows will take place from 4 to 6 p.m. at the Crowne Plaza Hotel across the street from the San Jose Center for the Performing Arts Theater.
For tickets to either the benefit shows or the reception only, call (408) 975-2730. For show and reception combination purchases, call (408) 453-1574, e-mail groupsales@amtsj.org or go to amtsj.org.
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