Get used to it. This is not the fragile little Flower of the past; this is a brand-new version, and any comparisons with the lightweight production of 1958 and its subsequent Hollywood version will only confuse the issue. Purists may object to the revamped version, but there was little heft in the original, which was less honest than this production about the assimilation of the Chinese into American culture. Librettist David Henry Hwang has joined the trend of darkening our sunny old musicals (Oklahoma!, Carousel) by emphasizing the serious social issues Richard Rodgers & Oscar Hammerstein II were unafraid to address, however musically couched. They touched on the generational conflict between foreign and American-born Chinese, the ease with which some were corrupted by greed, others by poverty, pre-feminist sentiments, the struggle to escape from stereotypes in the public eye, the tendency to social climb by associating with Caucasians over fellow Chinese.
Hwang's much- publicized vow to update the original Hammerstein/Fields book presents a harder, more honest look at these conflicts. Hwang, himself the son of Chinese immigrants, doubtless knows of what he writes. In synch with his intentions, the result is tawdry and occasionally tasteless, but it was designed to be so. Director/Choreographer Robert Longbottom, not known for his subtlety, is an obvious co-conspirator. This version of Flower Drum Song should be treated as an entirely new show and, as such, it works.
The score is still wonderful, even with its new dark interpretation, and music supervisor David Chase and orchestrator Don Sebesky have emphasized its drama as evidenced in the starkly-staged Prologue. Alone onstage with her little drum of dreams, Mei-Li (Lea Salonga) quietly sings the show's theme, "A Hundred Little Miracles." The music gradually builds as the cast reenacts, through dance, the events that led her to America: her father's death at the hands of the Communists and his gift of the drum and wish to send her here. The drum of dreams on which she taps foretells the beauty of love that will not blossom until the show's finale.
In a style evident throughout the production, each song is a conduit through several scenes. Crowded on a boat, on its torturous ocean journey, Mei-Li sings in grim determination, "I Am Going To Like it Here." As she gets a job in the nightclub of her father's friend Wang (Randall Duk Kim), and meets his American born son, Ta (Jose Llana) the song, repeated, now turns optimistic. When Ta professes his love for the star of his show, Linda Low (Sandra Allen), Mei-Li flees the club for a menial job in a factory and contemplates a return to Hong Kong with the boy she met on the boat (Hoon Lee). Brokenhearted, she again sings "I Am Going To Like It Here" this time with irony.
Rife with political concepts, Linda Low instructs the awestruck Mei-Li in the attitude and dress of a modern Chinese female in the pre-feminist anthem, "I Enjoy Being a Girl." The song then turns strident in her strip act in the club. In contrast, Mei-Li re enacts a traditional, tender Chinese love song, "You Are Beautiful," with Ta. Wang and Ta are locked into a generational conflict between old and new values. Key to the struggle is the newly-rethought character of Madame Liang (Jodi Long), a frustrated former movie star who is now a brassy real estate and talent agent. Seizing the opportunity to turn the struggling Chinese Opera theater into Ta's vision of a commercial nightclub, she convinces Wang to rename it "Chop Suey" (which, aptly, is a pseudo-Chinese dish created for American palates), thus providing the venue for some of the show's most outrageous numbers: an exuberant paean to San Francisco's Chinatown, "Grant Avenue," a rather coarse "Fan Tan Fannie," and Wang, somewhat too easily corrupted by greed (another political message) from keeper of tradition to bawdy nightclub performer in "Gliding Through My Memoree."
The comic anti-wedlock lovesong, "Don't Marry Me," is now between Wang and Madame Liang, while the lonely Mei-Li suffers through "Love Look Away" until Ta is inspired by her love in "Like A God." Mei-Li's naive purity has been replaced by a young, gritty girl to which Lea Salonga's signature stage presence lends dignity and credibility. She's a mix of new-world determinism and old-world propriety, and Salonga delivers her with an unshakable earnestness. Jose Llana is strong voiced and lithe limbed as the assimilated son who returns to his roots, though he tries too hard to earn his lead role. Hoon Lee, as the Chinese boyfriend, presents a grim reflection of the joyless Commie regime. Jodi Long is a triple-threat marvel as Madame Liang, a singer/comedienne with an unexploited (here) talent for dance. Randall Duk Kim, a multifaceted actor with a distinguished career, plays Wang very broadly where Alvin Ing retains his dignity in the minor role of Chin, Wang's sidekick. Sandra Allen is spirited and sexy as the ambitious Linda Low. She is just as she should be as a focus-ed wannabe who will use whomever to get a career boost.
The costumes and chorus girls are a hoot, as they were meant to be, as they klutz their way through cartoon-y, Asian-American interpretations of nightclub sophistication. The band, onstage throughout, takes Broadway brassiness a step beyond to almost confrontational. Gregg Barnes' caricaturish '50s costumes echo the feeling of Robin Wagner's garish sets.
The overall look of the production is deliberately gross and coarse to replicate the joke the Chinese are perpetrating on their Caucasian customers by aping them in seedy-looking nightclub productions, a parody of the uptown version, just as the broad-and-bawdy numbers and over-the-top costumes are part of the glitzy hoax. But there are also exquisite moments of poignancy and beauty in the cinematic "You Are Beautiful," with figures in traditional garb dancing daintily in the background as the two potential lovers engage in a seductive, breathtakingly touching duet.
There is nary a song that director Longbottom will not tweak into a many-segmented, dramatic musical journey invested with new dimensions.
This version of Flower Drum Song is a look at the old-world Chinese, who are all-too willing to caricature themselves for money, the American dream, and their children's return to traditional values as a backlash. The message is wonderfully wrapped around the indestructible, still-gorgeous score.
