Word: broadway
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Playwright David Henry Hwang (M. Butterfly) was one of many Asian Americans with mixed feelings about the 1958 show's cliched and old-fashioned portrayal of Chinese immigrants in the U.S. But he's the one who decided to do something about it. Working with seasoned Broadway pros and watched over by the guardians of the Rodgers and Hammerstein canon, he totally rewrote the musical's book. Characters were changed, songs were rearranged (one, The Other Generation, was dropped), and more historical context was added. "It was an opportunity," says Hwang, "to do my own story about Chinese immigration...
...occasional pretensions (and a gauntlet of critics suddenly quite protective of a musical they never much liked in the first place), Hwang has succeeded. Flower Drum Song has been rescued from the dustbin of theater history and made relevant again without getting weighed down by political correctness. This new Broadway revival is a work of bravery and intelligence and real faith in the possibilities of musical theater...
Director Robert Longbottom (Side Show) skillfully adds Asian seasoning to a gourmet spread of Broadway showmanship. In the opening scenes, Mei-Li's escape from China is pantomimed simply, with the help of bamboo poles manipulated by actors. In the big production number Chop Suey, the chorus girls are dressed as Chinese-takeout boxes. Even that delightfully retro standard I Enjoy Being a Girl, which starts in Linda's dressing room and ends as a number at the club, comes roaring back as if it were brand...
...YORK at the Broadway musical Hairspray...
...DIED. ADOLPH GREEN, 87, lyricist, librettist, playwright and performer who co-wrote hit Broadway musicals such as On the Town and the screenplay for Singin' in the Rain during a 60-year partnership with Betty Comden; in Manhattan. The couple was artistically inseparable and gave postwar America its most memorable Manhattan geography lesson?"The Bronx is up and the Battery down"?in the lyrics to New York, New York (A Hell of a Town...