Myoshi Umeki's charm and Pat Suzuki's razzle-dazzle are still highlights, and the entire cast is solid. If you don't know this score, it is well worth your time and money. In recent years, producers have shied away from Flower Drum Song because of its all-oriental casting requirements, and others fear that the story would be frowned by the PC police. Now that a new book has been written, we will hopefully see the show make a comeback. This show has garnered a lot of attention since a brief but critically acclaimed run at New York's Playwrights Horizons in 1996.
Common lives sing eloquently, and the greatness of little things resonates.
This is not old-style showtune time. By the way, although composer Adam Guettel doesn't proclaim the fact, he has a remarkable musical theatre lineage. His mother Mary Rodgers composed Once Upon A Mattress , and his grandfather Richard composed a show or two with lyricists named Hart and Hammerstein. Like his grandfather, Guettel is not afraid to do something new. Luckily, the Papermill Playhouse Follies made it to CD as the most complete and satisfying recording this peerless Sondheim score has ever received.