2002-12-31 04:00:00 PDT New York-- In the 1961 film musical "Flower Drum Song," the Chinese picture bride Mei Li and her father get their first dazzling glimpse of San Francisco from the portal of a ...

It may seem odd to have two American banjo players perform an ancient Chinese folk tune to welcome the new year, but once you hear it you're likely to be enchanted. This duo, Abigail Washburn and Bela ...

When the hit “Flower Drum Song” first opened on Broadway in 1958, it was greeted both warmly and frostily by the Asian-American community. Warmly, because the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical offered ...

Many older musicals go in for a refreshing facelift, but this version of Rodgers and Hammerstein's "Flower Drum Song," with a spankin' new book by David Henry Hwang, is a lot closer to wholesale ...

If we want to make something new, we first have to love what is old." That line from David Henry Hwang's "revisal" of Flower Drum Song expresses the challenge facing the musical's characters, who ...

There are at least three versions of the musical “Flower Drum Song” in the world, and the main thing they have in common are the songs of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II. The musical was ...

Chinese stowaway Mei Li (Miyoshi Umeki) arrives in San Francisco with her father to meet her fiancé, wealthy nightclub owner Sammy Fong (Jack Soo), in an arranged marriage, but the groom has his eye ...

“Flower Drum Song” is generally regarded as one of musical-theater masters Rodgers and Hammerstein’s lesser efforts. And the 1958 original is seen by many as hopelessly outdated, corny at best and ...

There’s an especially poignant moment during the curtain call of “Flower Drum Song,” now playing at Lucie Stern Theatre in Palo Alto, when the actors announce where they were born. It’s eye-opening ...

Presented by Benjamin Mordecai, Michael A. Jenkins, Waxman Williams Entertainment, Center Theatre Group/Mark Taper Forum/Gordon Davidson/Charles Dillingham with Robert G. Bartner, ...

Arts correspondent Jeffrey Brown looks at a new makeover for a classic Broadway musical. "Flower Drum Song" began life as a novel, became a musical and a film, and is now back here on Broadway in a ...