Today, some of the most beloved musicals of the American theater can sometimes seem outmoded and vaguely inappropriate, since society’s standards have changed radically in the last 60 years.
And this was the case with Rodgers & Hammerstein‘s classic “Flower Drum Song,” a love story about Chinese American immigrants in San Francisco’s Chinatown. It was based on C.Y. Lee’s bestselling 1957 novel, which first appeared on Broadway in 1958 and became a movie in 1961.
It’s sometimes considered one of the songwriting duo’s lesser efforts, but it was important and continues to loom large to Asian Americans as the first-ever depiction of them as ordinary Americans, with a cast of actors, singers and dancers who were nearly all Asian Americans.
In the past, depictions of Asians characters tended to be in what was called “yellowface” — played by white actors with heavy makeup designed to change their appearance. One of the most notorious examples was actor Mickey Rooney’s performance as the bucktoothed, Japanese character Mr. Yunioshi in the 1961 “Breakfast at Tiffany’s.” He wore thick glasses, prosthetic teeth and heavy makeup to portray the character. (Rooney said later that if he knew people would be offended, he would not have taken the part.)
Although the original “Flower Drum Song” can seem dated today, catchy songs and a colorful plot centered in Chinatown’s famed Grant Avenue keep it worth saving from oblivion. That’s one reason why Tony-award winning playwright David Henry Hwang decided to bring it into the 21st Century. His revamped effort is now on display at the East West Players most recent production as part of its 60th anniversary season.
Hwang grew up in San Gabriel, a city with many Chinese residents. His mother played piano for East West Players soon after its inception, he recalled. He remembers how the musical felt important to his community when it came out.
“‘Flower Drum Song’ looms so large in the Asian American imagination, whether they love it or not,” Hwang said. “It has recently been criticized for various aspects of its portrayals, but it was really revolutionary in its time. The idea in 1958 that Asian Americans were just like anyone else.”
That’s why he decided to update it for the second time for East West Players. It’s playing through May 31 at the 880-seat Aratani Theatre in Los Angeles’ historic Little Tokyo.
In Hwang’s earlier rewrite, which opened at the Taper and later went to Broadway in 2002, he overhauled the plot significantly, eliminated some characters, adding others and moving the action from the protagonist’s home to a Chinatown theater devoted to Chinese opera that’s been turned into a nightclub.
Hwang said he decided to tackle it because “it was simply not being performed anymore, perhaps because producers didn’t know how to cast it or critiques from Asian Americans that things were creaky and stereotypical.”
The original plot centered on the arrival of a submissive, quiet mail-order bride and her father from China, who sneaked into the country to marry a nightclub owner who had no idea that his mother had brought the girl over for him.
The nightclub owner was in fact in love with a brassy performer who was the star of his show. He’d never brought her home, though, to meet his traditional family, who were immigrants from China.
Hwang said that this always sounded a false note with Chinese Americans because the mail order bride was already an outdated idea that was no longer practiced, and the overly submissive bride character, Mei-Li, seemed inauthentic, even in 1958. This wasn’t particularly surprising, considering no one who was actually Asian was involved in the original writing of the play’s book or the score.
Even though the plot didn’t entirely ring true, the production was still meaningful to Asian Americans as the first time they saw themselves depicted on stage and screen, Hwang said.
“I felt it was something worth reclaiming,” Hwang said. “I wanted to try to create a show that was more serious dealing with some of the (immigrant) issues the story implies.”
In Hwang’s latest overhaul, Mei-Li has become a refugee from Communist China, who arrives in San Francisco without her father, who’s been imprisoned by the Chinese government.
Her father ran an opera company in China, and she comes to seek refuge with the owner of a failing Chinese opera company on San Francisco’s famed Grant Avenue. While there, she falls for the owner’s son, Wang Ta, who wants to turn the theater into a nightclub. It’s already operating as a nightclub one day per week, and the son wants to see it running fulltime, since the opera often plays to empty houses.
However, the father, Old Master Wang, is old-fashioned and refuses. Mei-Li, who is a trained opera singer, becomes close to the son, WangTa, who pines for his star performer while failing to notice that his new friend is in love with him.
In the original musical, nightclub star Linda Low, played in the movie by Nancy Kwan, is a beautiful, vivacious and talented performer. She belts out numbers including “I Enjoy Being a Girl,” a catchy tune that today seems anachronistic and is mostly performed onstage today by drag queens.
Although the song may be a relic, it’s still clever and catchy. Hwang still uses it, but updates it by having performer Low complain to the theater management about having to perform it.
He does this with most of the musical’s other songs, relocating them in the story to where they now make sense.
For example, the number “Chop Suey,” original sung by a Chinese aunt whose character was eliminated, is about assimilation into American culture.
Hwang keeps the song, but turns it into a song-and-dance number in the newly revamped nightclub, now called Club Chop Suey.
(Photo by Mike Palma for the East West Players, April 2026. Used by permission.)
He eliminated the seamstress character who pines unrequitedly for the male protagonist, as well as the youngest son, a baseball-playing full American. He adds a new character named Harvard, a young Chinese American gay man who makes costumes for the shows and longs to become a performer.
The older aunt’s character has morphed into a bold talent agent, who sees the potential for the nightclub and manages to convince the patriarch of the household that the nightclub could be a money-maker for them all.
The play works well in its new format, with modern female characters and its setting moved entirely to the theater-nightclub.
Hwang won his Tony award in 1988 for the widely acclaimed “M. Butterfly,” which had a successful run on Broadway and was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. It was inspired by a real-life account of a French diplomat who has a Chinese mistress for 20 years, seemingly unaware that his paramour is actually a man, and a Communist spy. His plays often revolve around issues involving Asian-Americans and their roles in society.
‘Flower Drum Song’
When: Through May 31; 7:30 p.m. Fridays, 2 and 8 p.m. Saturdays, 1 and 7 p.m. Sundays
Where: Aratani Theatre at the Japanese American Cultural & Community Center, 244 San Pedro St, Los Angeles
Tickets: $29-$119
Information: eastwestplayers.org