'FLOWER' BLOSSOMS ANEW FAMED ASIAN PLAYWRIGHT LIFTS MUSICAL OUT OF DISREPUTE.

Byline: Evan Henerson Theater Writer

Some 20 years ago, a writer at an Asian-American newspaper in the Bay Area wrote that David Henry Hwang's first play ``FOB (Fresh off the Boat)'' managed to ``set Asian-Americans back 20 years.''

Hwang brings up the quote neither to gloat nor to reopen a wound. The remark didn't stop the San Gabriel-born Hwang from continuing to write about the Asian-American experience. Two decades after that same play earned Hwang an Obie award in New York, the Tony award-winning author of ``M. Butterfly'' has both branched out and stayed the course.

``For a while if you're an Asian and you have success, you become the official Asian-American and you're supposed to be representing all the views of this community, which is really not possible,'' says Hwang, who now lives in New York. ``There are people who aren't going to like what you do even when you write about your own community. I think I've learned as an artist I just have to do what interests me and people will decide what they decide.''

In a twist of irony, what interests Hwang now is a musical that ruffled the guardians of political correctness even before the term ``PC'' existed. ``Flower Drum Song,'' a love story set in San Francisco's Chinatown and written by the famed composing team of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II, has not had a major revival since the show played out its popularity in the late 1950s and in a 1961 movie.

Now it's back in a new production directed by Robert Longbottom and starring Tony Award winner Lea Salonga, opening tonight at the Mark Taper Forum. The music is the same, but Hwang has substantially rewritten the story, eliminating some characters, combining others and changing the context of some of the songs. His aim: to ``write the book that Oscar Hammerstein might have written if he had been Asian-American.''

In this endeavor, Hwang - who confesses to ``a complicated relationship'' with ``Flower Drum Song'' since childhood - has the blessing of the Rodgers and Hammerstein Organization, the estate that controls the rights to the composers' works.

Who better to breathe new life into a dated and potentially offensive work, says RHO president Ted Chapin, than ``the poet laureate of the Asian- American community?''

``This is a world (Hwang) knows and has examined in play after play,'' says Chapin. ``The idea seemed kind of intriguing. If Neil Simon had approached us, it would have been an entirely different thing.''

Familiar songs

Still in place - albeit in different order and sung by different characters than in the original - are standards like ``A Hundred Million Miracles,'' ``I Enjoy Being a Girl,'' ``You Are Beautiful,'' ``Don't Marry Me'' and ``I Am Going to Like It Here.'' The creative team has imported ``The Next Time It Happens'' from the show ``Pipe Dream'' and restored the song ``My Best Love.''

Of Rodgers and Hammerstein's standards, the ``Flower Drum'' soundtrack may not be as instantly recognizable as, say, ``Some Enchanted Evening,'' ``Do-Re-Mi'' or ``I Whistle a Happy Tune,'' but they're familiar.

``A lot of our actors use those songs as audition pieces,'' says Tim Dang, artistic director of East West Players, the L.A.-based Asian-American theater company that operates out of a theater named after David Henry Hwang.

``Nobody has ever done 'Chop Suey,' '' Dang adds. ``I would probably have to throw them out of the audition.''

Ah, yes, ``Chop Suey,'' as un-PC a song as you're likely to find anywhere, filled with bad puns and sexual double entendre: ``Bally-Hooey, Soft and Gooey, A Really Big Shoey.''

``It's never been one of my favorite songs,'' admits RHO's Chapin. ``I had heard they might do it with dancing food. It's delicate to take songs like that and push them into context without making fun of them and using them in ways that are valid.''

Hwang sidestepped the ``Chop Suey'' minefield by putting the song in the context of performance. Club owner Wang Chi-Yang and his son, Ta, are theater owners trying to determine what type of entertainment will sell - both to Chinatown residents and tourists.

``I don't even know if people know what chop suey is,'' says Hwang. ``If the clash of cultures is expressed in a theatrical context, we can use different forms of theatricalism as a metaphor for that context. It becomes about the conflict between a traditional Chinese opera in Chinatown and the club that evolves out of it.''

``Flower Drum Song,'' Hwang quickly decided, was about people in the theater. The new version would be a backstage musical.

Ask people today about ``Flower Drum Song,'' and many musical-theater aficionados will admit they have never seen it. Those who missed it the first time around or didn't catch the national tour didn't get much of a chance with revivals or community-theater productions. During the early stages of Hwang's revival, Chapin looked around to see where the work was still being performed. He discovered a handful of smaller productions on the West Coast.

More people remember the movie, which starred Nancy Kwan (one year after her debut in ``The World of Suzie Wong'') as nightclub hottie Linda Low, and Myoshi Umeki, an Oscar winner from ``Sayonara,'' as arranged bride Mei Li.

Bright and colorful, the movie featured a huge cast, expensive-looking production values and, most significantly for a young David Henry Hwang, Asian characters acting like Americans.

``There's an actual romance between an Asian man and an Asian woman, there's a strong Asian male lead, and we're always complaining about being emasculated in the media,'' said Hwang. ``Then there's the cast, which is kind of extraordinary, the fact that Rodgers and Hammerstein made the effort to do that. Everybody in that movie is Asian except Juanita Hall, and that ain't bad.''

A big gap

If the film version of ``Flower Drum Song'' represented one cinematic milestone for Asian-American actors, the next one wouldn't come along until the movie ``The Joy Luck Club'' more than 30 years later.

``That's sort of the difference between studio releases,'' says Hwang. ``This was a way to bring together most of Asian-American performance history from the 20th century going all the way back to ('Flower Drum Song' novelist) C.Y. Lee, then to the generation of people who starred in the original, then to my generation and finally the kids who are in this production.''

Don Nakanishi, director of UCLA's Asian American Studies Center, thinks Hwang is on to something by recasting ``Flower Drum Song'' within the world of entertainment.

``Maybe what David is trying to capture is this sort of buried history, of Asian-Americans trying to make their mark as singers and dancers and so forth,'' said Nakanishi. ``To that extent, this is kind of an interesting part of Asian-American history.''

Hwang's own creative history, post ``M. Butterfly,'' has been nothing if not diverse. He experienced a Broadway flop in ``Face Value'' and earned a second Tony nomination for ``Golden Child.'' His work on ``Flower Drum Song'' has solidified an interest in music and musical theater, and Hwang has collaborated with musicians Philip Glass and Bright Sheng. He is the co-writer of the upcoming Neil LaBute film ``Possession,'' based on A.S. Byatt's novel about a romance between Victorian poets, and has a new play about the painter Paul Gaugin.

And in another bit of irony, as ``Flower Drum Song'' concludes its run at the Taper - with eyes on a possible Broadway engagement in time for a 2002 Richard Rodgers centenary - the neighboring Ahmanson Theatre will host the national tour of Disney's musical ``Aida,'' which Hwang co-wrote with Robert Falls and Linda Woolverton.

Call ``Aida'' a good musical-theater tuneup for the work Hwang eventually would do on ``Flower Drum Song.''

``I continue to feel sort of good about the fact that Disney, which is a mega conglomerate, asked me to come on, to use my craft on something that wasn't an Asian-themed project and therefore was kind of not pigeonholing me in that way,'' says Hwang.

And even if ``Flower Drum Song'' will bring out both the musical-theater purists who say the story shouldn't be changed and Asian-American activists who say it shouldn't even be performed, Hwang isn't especially worried.

``I think basically the vast majority of people are not going to consider the politics and history behind this, but are just going to show up and see if they enjoy the show,'' said Hwang ``The original will always exist. My version will be judged and people will like it or they won't. History, to the extent they're interested in the subject, will decide which version they like best.''

``FLOWER DRUM SONG''

Where: Mark Taper Forum, 135 N. Grand Ave., Los Angeles.

When: 8 p.m. Tuesday through Friday, 2:30 and 8 p.m. Saturday, 2:30 and 7:30 p.m. Sunday; through Dec. 2.

Tickets: $45 to $50. Call [phone].

CAPTION(S):

4 photos

Photo:

(1 -- cover -- color) East meets...East

David Henry Hwang rewrites `Flower Drum Song' with modern sensibilities

Phil McCarten/Staff Photographer

(2) David Henry Hwang, whose ``M. Butterfly'' was a critical and popular success, took on the challenge of recasting ``Flower Drum Song'' with modern sensibilities.

Craig Schwartz/Special to the Daily News

(3) Lea Salonga stars as Mei Li in ``Flower Drum Song'' at the Mark Taper Forum.

(4) Sandra Allen, left, Jose Llana, Tzi Ma, Allen Liu and Jodi Long team up for a number.