Review: FLOWER DRUM SONG at Mu Performing Arts & Park Square Theatre

FLOWER DRUM SONG is a hard show to mount. It requires credible brief performances in the style of Beijing Opera, multiple large production numbers in various nightclub styles, plus a large cast of Asian American characters who can sing, dance, and act. The ambitious show on stage in Saint Paul through February 19 is a joint production undertaken as part of the celebratory 25th season of Mu Performing Arts, the Twin Cities' Asian-American theater company, working closely with Park Square Theatre in Saint Paul, which hosted the collaboration on their main stage.

Rogers & Hammerstein's original FLOWER DRUM SONG premiered in 1958, with winsome songs, a love story, and an exoticized setting in Chinatown. Unusual in its day for an all Asian-American cast, the musical fell into some disfavor over subsequent decades. But playwright David Henry Hwang, inspired by the success of a revival of THE KING AND I on Broadway in 1996, decided that FLOWER DRUM SONG was worth revisiting. With the blessing of the various stakeholders, he rewrote the book substantially but left the songs largely untouched. His version played in New York in 2002.

This updated FLOWER DRUM SONG references cultural repression in China but remains centered in San Francisco's Chinatown during the late 1950s. A young woman, Mei-Li, arrives there on a boat following the persecution and death of her father, a Beijing Opera star. She brings with her little besides the old flower drum he gifted her, determination, and the name of an old colleague from the opera, Wang.

Wang is trying, with little success, to preserve the detailed performance styles of traditional Chinese opera. Since the death of his wife, he's required his son to learn and play the women's roles. That son, Ta, is far more interested in assimilating. He cooperates in his father's thinly attended artistic performances on the condition that he can turn the theater into a (fairly genteel) strip club one night a week, with Asian women performing for white audiences, led by his star performer, Linda.

As the play proceeds, fundamental and familiar inter-generational arguments about how to honor ethnic traditions while becoming American are aired out and inverted. Love and ambition tangle lives. There are laughs, too. The biggest one on opening night came in response to a line about telling journalists the truth being the very last thing one should do: an unexpected marker of the show's continued relevance. Other laughs arose in response to Reyes' staging of a couple of the big song-and-dance numbers, especially once the club fully embraces a kitschy fusion vibe, calling itself "Club Chop Suey."

For me, the kitsch here is well balanced by the short but beautifully danced and repeated segments of Chinese Opera, done sometimes in full costume, and sometimes in Western dress. The most assured performer in this company is Wesley Mouri as Ta, the romantic lead. He sings beautifully, and moves with remarkable fluidity and graceful detail in the opera sequences, especially for a large man; he is able to carry either the male or female role.

Some of the other standout performers are, like Mouri, professional actors. Meghan Kreidler as nightclub star Linda is both sexy and compassionate. Katie Bradley as the brassy Madame Liang wields convincing authority. Neither Stephanie Bertumen as Mei-Li nor Sherwin Resurreccion as Wang are AEA members (yet) but carry their lead roles with conviction. Bertumen has a sweet singing voice, and Resurreccion manages both gravitas and shamelessness. Assembling a company this size required tapping talent from a variety of local training programs and colleges; the ensemble is uneven but committed.

The heart of the show was most visible in the opening and closing sequences, both sung by the company in the most memorable song: "A Hundred Million Miracles." The first time this is staged, we see an extended story prologue that carries us through events in China, across the sea in steerage, to arrival in San Francisco. For the finale, the entire cast is dressed in gorgeous red wedding clothes. Reyes chose to create a ritual recitation by the actors of their birthplaces, which included locations all over the US plus Korea and the Philippines. It was a moving reminder that countless immigrant miracles make up our collective history.

Playwright David Henry Hwang was in attendance opening night to honor the company of 17 Asian-American actors as well as director Randy Reyes. Reyes has had an extra busy several months: in addition to directing this show and serving as Mu's Artistic Director, he was a member of the national steering committee for the Ghostlight Project, coordinating actions at theaters across the country on the eve of Donald Trump's inauguration.

Co-productions like these, which make it possible for the American theater to be a place of inclusion, where audiences can take in stories new to them from widely diverse points of view, are part of why theater remains such a crucial civic site. That's what Ghostlight means to promote.

So, well done, Mu and Park Square.

photo credit: Rich Ryan

To post a comment, you must register and login.