Flower Drum Song (2002)

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.