Yes, Flower Drum Song actually first appeared
on Broadway in 1957, but today, I’m specifically looking at the retooled
version of the show that was mounted for the 2002 revival, the one that paired
Rodgers and Hammerstein’s score with a new book by David Henry Hwang. I’ve had the cast recording from that
production for a while (Lea Salonga, Jose Llana, and Alvin Ing? All
over that,) but it wasn’t until I
had a chance to see the show live onstage that I realized just how cool this
version is.
In the
1950s, Mei-li flees China and arrive in San Francisco with only her clothes, a
flower drum, and the address of a friend of her late father. The friend, Wang, is running (and starring
in) a struggling opera house in Chinatown, and when he sees Mei-li’s love for
the art form, he’s all too happy to hire her and help her make her way in her
new country. Mei-li takes a liking to
Wang’s son Ta, but Ta has a seemingly-unattainable love of his own: Linda, a dancer in the weekly “club night” Ta
hosts at the opera house. As conflicts
build between Ta and his father over the opera house, Chinese opera and
nightclub dances stand in for old-world and new-world values, traditions, and
aesthetics, and Mei-li feels the tug of both.
I’m not
sure that summary altogether covers it.
This is a really beautiful, engrossing story that hits on a lot of
resonant topics related to immigration, assimilation, and culture. The show deals with its questions in unexpected
ways, especially where Wang and Ta are concerned (I’ve never seen a first- vs.
second-generation argument go down quite like theirs does,) and it packs a lot
of social exploration amid the Rodgers and Hammerstein numbers, which are
divided pretty evenly between frothy fun and lush romance. I wasn’t much of a fan of Wang’s “Uncle
Sammy” numbers on the cast recording, but seeing them in the context of the
show is a revelation, casting a critical eye on commodifying Asianness as
something “exotic,” other, and slightly ridiculous. With Hwang’s book informing them, these songs
become scathing.
And yeah,
romance – Rodgers and Hammerstein know how to do it right. I especially enjoy “Like a God” (and even
more in context,) “My Best Love,” and “Love, Look Away” (pretty sure you
haven’t lived until you’ve heard Lea Salonga sing this song.) Hwang’s book knows what it’s doing here as
well. In many ways, Mei-li and Linda are
just as clear stand-ins for the old and new world as the opera house and the
nightclub are, but the script examines these ideas without getting heavy-handed
with it. There’s one scene in particular
between Ta and Linda that strikes right to the heart of both characters and
their experiences as born-and-bred Americans who still get cast as perpetual
foreigners – terrific stuff.
Warnings
Suggestiveness,
implied violence, a little language, drinking, and thematic elements.
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