the new flower drum song - a hundred million disappointments

In 2001, playwright David Henry Hwang finally got his completely rewritten version of Rogers & Hammerstein's fifty-year-old musical "Flower Drum Song" on stage at Los Angeles' Mark Taper Theatre. I was much looking forward to it, as my entire family really enjoyed the 1960s film version, and I myself had even auditioned for the show.

It was a staggering disappointment on every possible level.

**** SUMMARY ****

Cultural and generational gaps comprised the theme of the original Flower Drum Song. Mixed in with the problems of conflicting cultures, the show addressed universal issues of family, identity, rebellion, etc., all of which are still relevant today.

The new book goes in entirely different directions.

• The new show begins with broad political statements about human rights injustices in 1950s China, with an opening number depicting Mei Li's father being killed for tearing down a poster of Chairman Mao.
• The play shifts to a standard "boy meets girl" musical theatre theme between Mei Li and Ta, the son of Sammy Fong. However, this immediately gets pushed aside for almost an hour of showstopper after burlesque showstopper, starring Linda Lo.
• The story now focusses on the slapstick conflict of Sammy trying to prevent his son and Madame Liang, a talent agent, from turning his traditional Chinese Opera theatre into a strip club.
• Act 2 is dedicated to the comic romance between Sammy and Liang - a cute but lightweight relationship that completely takes over the show. Mei Li and Ta's relationship finally reappears in the final 15 minutes, after we suddenly learn that Ta is obsessed with Linda, but she rejects him.
• We return to the classic "boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl back" tale from so many American musicals: Ta and Mei Li end the show married.

**** ANALYSIS ****

The show never settles on a single theme, message, story, or character.

It tries to make political statements about China, sociological statements about Chinese immigrants, condemning statements about Asian stereotyping in Hollywood, and humane statements about the competition between fathers and sons.

The new Flower Drum Song simply tries to make too many statements, within the matrix of a script and a setting (a 1950s San Francisco nightclub) that does not hold them well.

This lack of focus contributes to the characters' lack of depth and dimension, making none of them able to deliver any serious message. As written, the characters are best suited for one-liners and comic "bits", of which the script is full. Unfortunately, without a strong, unifying story thread, the bits do not contribute to an overall theme.

The performances of the chorus and dancers were wonderful, and their costumes were imaginative and beautifully created. I did find all of the principle characters to be poorly cast: some were poor singers; others poor actors; none were talented dancers. Lea Salonga looked 10 years too old to play Mei Li, especially as the man playing her boyfriend looked 10 years younger than she.

The secondary characters and secondary situations took control of the show, providing endless cute comic relief at the expense of emotional depth and meaningful messages.

The script departed from the central love story for so long that the main characters were forgotten; the opening sequence about human rights violations in China was never reprised, reducing it to a cameo, by-the-way message. And although there are many references to Asian stereotyping, there is no ultimate direction to those references.

In fact, the end of the show seems to indicate that each generation of Asian female actors will make the same humiliating compromises, over and over -- and it is played for a cheap laugh, not as a statement.

**** CONCLUSIONS ****

David Henry Hwang's complete rewrite of this show lacks an emotional heart. Without a strong theme tying all the scattered pieces of the script together, it plays like a show rushed to production too quickly.

This is surprising, considering the size of the Taper theatre (700+ seats) and the expense of producing a musical there (tickets were $50). A show that feels as if it is still in its early drafts should not be presented on a large stage, it needs much more workshopping, much more editing, and much more focus on what it's really saying.

It is ironic that the original script for "FLower Drum Song" - completed almost 50 years ago - had none of these issues that the current one suffers from.

No matter what a person's opinion of the original Flower Drum Song, it was inarguably the first all-Asian cast and show that made it to Broadway. That show demonstrated without a doubt that American Asians are no different from any other type of American.

In contrast, the new show uses numerous derogatory references to Caucasians, and even shades into bitterness and self-hatred of being Asian in America.

The new show not only bears no resemblance to the original (other than taking its character names, songs, and title), it also lacks any of the original's charm, polish, originality, and groundbreaking qualities.

This is a revival that is not a revival. A restaging of the original work would have provided that cast, crew, and audience with a far more entertaining and meaningful evening of theatre.