Flower Drum Song

In 1958, it was daring to stage a Broadway musical about romances between Asian men and women in San Francisco's Chinatown. It was filmed in 1961 and reached an even wider audience before dropping off the cultural radar. Nearly thirty years later, the well-established Asian-American writer David Henry Hwang decided to revisit the show and give it a more modern sense of authenticity. The updated and revitalised show opened in Los Angeles in 2001 and returned in triumph to Broadway in 2002. 'To create something new, we must first love what is old.' So says a character in David Henry Hwang's updated book to Rodgers and Hammerstein's Broadway musical. This volume contains Hwang's new text (and Hammerstein's lyrics) plus Hwang's introduction and an afterward by Karen Wada documenting the long and vital history of this landmark musical.