It's also as different as can be from the show they actually wrote (with Joseph Fields serving as Hammerstein's co-librettist) that opened on Broadway in 1958. Based on the novel by C. Y. Lee, the original Flower Drum Song was a fully integrated musical, professionally and intelligently constructed with plenty of humor, a beautiful score, and a one-of-a-kind story about the generational conflicts among the Chinese in late 50s San Francisco.
The Flower Drum Song currently on view is much like chop suey, "everything is in it - all mixed up," to borrow a line from the original libretto which has been completely scuttled in a favor of a new one by David Henry Hwang. Hwang's book lacks much of the charm, warmth, and wit of the original, and never takes the high road where the low road will do, but while Hammerstein and Fields created a well-rounded musical play, Hwang never really comes close.
Yes, there is the basic story at the center of the libretto of Mei Li (Lea Salonga), who escapes Communist China for a new life in San Francisco. She arrives at the Golden Pearl, a theatre owned by Wang (Randall Duk Kim) and specializes in Chinese opera, only to become enamored with his son Ta (Jose Llana). Ta, however, has little interest in the less thoroughly modern Mei-Li than the enticing Linda Low (Sandra Allen), who headlines - and strips - at the theatre's once a week "night club night." She catches the eye of theatrical agent Madame Liang (Jodi Long), who, so disconnected from her heritage, she has no qualms about changing the theatre into a trashy nightspot (the Club Shop Suey), capitalizing on Ta's yearning for mainstream acceptance and Wang's insatiable desire to perform.
What's never made clear is why Hwang felt it necessary to reduce the original, uniquely colorful story into just another backstager with a love triangle and lame jokes. One sample: "You know how most jobs involve money? This one doesn't." Another: "In China, courtship is easy. You simply marry the man before he gets to know you."
But the primary failing of the new libretto is that it never feels like an attempt to tell a story, but rather to just string songs together. Functionally, this Flower Drum Song is identical to Mamma Mia!, but this show, unlike that one, doesn't revel in reversing six decades of musical integration. It just never acknowledges that songs not written for situations in which they're used are never going to really work right in an entirely different story.
Some songs appear just misguided, as in Mei-Li's philosophy song, "A Hundred Million Miracles," staged as her trip to San Francisco or "My Best Love," cut before the original production's opening and assigned here (nonsensically) to a relatively minor character, Chin (Alvin Ing). Some songs are poorly cued from the dialogue, like "Grant Avenue," becoming Madame Liang's cheesy vision of the future or "I Am Going to Like It Here," (with its references to "the father's first son," though Wang apparently only has one). Others aren't really cued at all, like the nebulously positioned "Love, Look Away," a gorgeous song put over well by Salonga, but which makes no sense in the context of this story. The two numbers making up the night club sequence at the end of the first act do work well, though it's perhaps ironic their positioning has changed least from the original libretto.
Two other numbers, though, are flat-out embarrassing, Hwang and director Robert Longbottom forcing them into near parody of Rodgers's music and Hammerstein's lyrics. "I Enjoy Being a Girl" has become an embarrassing, overly long strip number for Allen, while "Chop Suey" finds Wang making his second act entrance in an enormous cardboard Chinese takeout box joined by women wearing light-up costumes and men dancing with giant chopsticks. But, as Wang has already been changed from a venerable father figure into a lazy comic device, none of this is really surprising."
Longbottom's direction and choreography are generally adequate but never exciting, despite echoes of his earlier and better work in Side Show and The Scarlet Pimpernel. He's allowed for a great deal of gaudy color, reflected mostly in Gregg Barnes's often striking costumes and occasionally in Robin Wagner's strangely staid sets and Natasha Katz's lighting, but it's never enough to make up for the flaws of the book.
But this Flower Drum Song does have two major assets. The first is its cast, led by Salonga, singing well and demonstrating the warmth and vulnerability necessary to make her character work. Llana is likable in a difficult role, and mismatched vocally with the music until his late second act solo, "Like a God." Long's keen comic sense is an asset to every scene she's in, adding lots of value to many of the cheap jokes, and Allen's Linda is attractive, if a bit underpowered. Kim, Ing, and Hoon Lee as Mei-Li's old-world friend are saddled with difficult roles but do fine by them, while only Allen Liu, playing the shamelessly stereotypical gay Harvard has real difficulty rising above the material.
The second asset is the most important, and the one that makes this Flower Drum Song enjoyable (at least in part), despite all its problems: its score of delightfully tuneful, varied songs. Though Don Sebesky's new orchestrations pale in comparison to Robert Russell Bennett's originals, the songs all bounce and lilt, lifting up the show in its dreariest moments - no one writes songs like these any more. Even if the songs themselves have been treated as chess pieces to be moved about indiscriminantly, hearing them sung in a theater by a good cast serves as a strong reminder of the power of good musical theatre writing.
You need reminders like that in this production of Flower Drum Song, perhaps the most visible example of the revival climate of 2002 Broadway. Perhaps appropriately, some of Hwang's words in the new libretto strike agonizingly true: "To create something new, you must first love what is old." Hwang and other writers seeking to revise or "improve" on the material of their predecessors should take those words to heart.
以下来自EMULE:
《花鼓戏》来自 C.Y. Lee (黎锦扬) 的同名小说，由 Oscar Hammerstein II 和 Joseph Fields 改写成音乐剧，作曲 Richard Rodgers，作词 Oscar Hammerstein II。该剧于1958年12月1日在纽约的圣詹姆士剧场(St. James Theatre)开演,在纽约百老汇连演六百场不衰，后来又在1960 年3月24日于伦敦的宫殿剧场(Palace Theatre)。在1961年，又由环球银幕公司拍成电影，其中，扮演琳达的就是著名华裔演员关南施 (Nancy Kwan)。
2002 年，在前《亚裔杂志》(A Magzine)发行人杨致和成立的Factor 公司的精心策划下，《花鼓戏》在九月下旬重登纽约百老汇剧场的维珍尼亚剧院(Virginia Theatre)。这一次的剧本由东尼奖得奖剧作家黄哲伦创新改写，也首次采用全部亚裔的演员阵容，包括扮演《西贡小姐》扬名的菲律宾演员 Lea Salonga 担任女主角，和曾在音乐剧《国王与我》(The King and I) 中担任主演的菲律宾籍演员 Jose Liana 扮演王大。该剧于2003年3月16日停止，但是已经有传说要在北美开展巡回演出。新剧的剧情和旧版略有不同，但是歌曲仍采用旧版。在下面的介绍是旧版的剧情。
虽然并不能算是 Rodgers 和 Hammerstein 合作的最成功的例子，《花鼓戏》的成就其实是不可忽视的。《花鼓戏》可是说是音乐喜剧的先驱，在当时题材严肃的音乐剧中独树一帜。而且，它也是屈指可数以中国人的生活为题材的音乐剧。
《花鼓戏》的故事取材于旧金山(San Francisco)唐人街上的中国人。故事围绕着唐人街里几代人的矛盾和代沟展开。在老一代人固执地坚持中国习俗的同时，在唐人街上长大的年轻人却更认同美国人的思考方式和生活方式。不过，按照喜剧的传统，大团圆的结尾必不可少，主人公也与心上人终成眷属。
既然是屈指可数的以中国人为题材的音乐剧，在这里就不能不多聊一下这部小说以及它的作者黎锦扬。
黎锦扬生于湖南，是著名语言学家黎锦熙三兄弟之一。他移民美国，在四十年代写出了《花鼓戏》(Flower Drum Song，也译做“花鼓歌”或“花鼓曲”)。他是继林语堂之后第二个用英文写书的华裔作家。他的最有名的作品无疑就是这部《花鼓戏》，他也在《纽约客》(New Yorker) 杂志上发表短篇小说，多数描写 二战末期滇缅一带的风情，后来合成一集，叫《天之一角》。但是他也曾杜撰过一部名为《天雠》的反共小说，据说“其中一章描写王光美被斗的惨状，历历在目，著不觉浑身汗毛倒竖”，但是，其中的捕风捉影，刻意渲染的成分过多，只能算是政治工具，不能叫做文学。《花鼓戏》如何，本人不曾有幸读过原著，拍成音乐剧后的故事想来是给改得面目全非，也不能作凭据，所以还得请读过小说的看官聊一聊看法了。
本片曾获第34届学院奖艺术指导（彩色）、摄影（彩色）、服装设计（彩色）、编曲（音乐剧类）、录音5项提名。
