The Drama Nerds Database
Flower Drum Song

Flower Drum Song

Shows · Flower Drum Song

Flower Drum Song was the eighth musical by the team of Rodgers and Hammerstein. It is based on the 1957 novel, The Flower Drum Song, by Chinese-American author C.

Opened
1958
Performances
600
Type
Musical
Era
Golden Age
Music: Richard RodgersLyrics: Oscar Hammerstein IIBook: Oscar Hammerstein II & Joseph Fields

Productions3 on Broadway

1958 St. James Theatre Original. December 1, 1958 · Gene Kelly 600 performances
1960 West End Transfer.
2002 Virginia Theatre Revival. October 17, 2002 · Robert Longbottom 169 performances

Every Broadway staging held in broadway-data, sourced to IBDB. West End runs are not yet held.

Recordings 12 albums held

Licensing 4 entries

US Concord Theatricals R&H Theatricals available
US Concord Theatricals R&H Theatricals available
UK Concord Theatricals R&H Theatricals available
UK Concord Theatricals R&H Theatricals available

Read from the licensor's own pages and catalogues. Rights move, and an empty row means we have not confirmed a publisher, not that the show cannot be licensed.

47 passages naming Flower Drum Song, found by keyword across 178 books. It's where this show turns up in the literature, not curated trivia about it.

Like The King and I and Flower Drum Song, the musical seemed to shortchange its major character. book:complete-book-of-1950s-broadway-musicals-the-dan-dietz#p842

When Merrick’s production of The World of Suzi Wong and the RODGERS AND HAMMERSTEIN musical Flower Drum Song were both about to open in 1958, Merrick sent Asian-Americans to picket the Flower Drum Song box office with signs proclaiming Wong as “the only authentic Chinese show.” Richard Rodgers was not amused. book:broadway-its-history-people-and-places-an-encyclopedia-bloom-ken-1949-2nd-ed-new#p535

Fields’s third child was playwright Joseph Fields, best remembered for teaming with Jerome Chodorov on a series of plays and the librettos to Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Wonderful Town, and Flower Drum Song. book:broadway-musicals-the-101-greatest-shows-of-all-time-bloom-ken-1949-vlastnik-fra#p81

The world of woozy song” was how critic Kenneth Tynan summed up Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Flower Drum Song. book:broadway-musicals-the-101-greatest-shows-of-all-time-bloom-ken-1949-vlastnik-fra#p234

even Flower Drum Song) included a lengthy ballet, usually psychological in nature and always heavily metaphoric. book:broadway-musicals-the-101-greatest-shows-of-all-time-bloom-ken-1949-vlastnik-fra#p242

In the ‘90s the Dodgers produced a series of revivals that included Guys and Dolls, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Once Upon a Mattress (1997), starring a vocally undercast Sarah Jessica Parker, and How to Succeed starring her husband, Matthew Broderick. Other revivals of the ‘90s included Fiddler on t… book:broadway-musicals-the-101-greatest-shows-of-all-time-bloom-ken-1949-vlastnik-fra#p263

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