唐人街的花鼓音樂劇

It's also as different as can be from the show they actually wrote (with Joseph Fields serving as Hammerstein's co-librettist) that opened on Broadway in 1958. Based on the novel by C. Y. Lee, the original Flower Drum Song was a fully integrated musical, professionally and intelligently constructed with plenty of humor, a beautiful score, and a one-of-a-kind story about the generational conflicts among the Chinese in late 50s San Francisco.

The Flower Drum Song currently on view is much like chop suey, "everything is in it - all mixed up," to borrow a line from the original libretto which has been completely scuttled in a favor of a new one by David Henry Hwang. Hwang's book lacks much of the charm, warmth, and wit of the original, and never takes the high road where the low road will do, but while Hammerstein and Fields created a well-rounded musical play, Hwang never really comes close.

Yes, there is the basic story at the center of the libretto of Mei Li (Lea Salonga), who escapes Communist China for a new life in San Francisco. She arrives at the Golden Pearl, a theatre owned by Wang (Randall Duk Kim) and specializes in Chinese opera, only to become enamored with his son Ta (Jose Llana). Ta, however, has little interest in the less thoroughly modern Mei-Li than the enticing Linda Low (Sandra Allen), who headlines - and strips - at the theatre's once a week "night club night." She catches the eye of theatrical agent Madame Liang (Jodi Long), who, so disconnected from her heritage, she has no qualms about changing the theatre into a trashy nightspot (the Club Shop Suey), capitalizing on Ta's yearning for mainstream acceptance and Wang's insatiable desire to perform.

What's never made clear is why Hwang felt it necessary to reduce the original, uniquely colorful story into just another backstager with a love triangle and lame jokes. One sample: "You know how most jobs involve money? This one doesn't." Another: "In China, courtship is easy. You simply marry the man before he gets to know you."

But the primary failing of the new libretto is that it never feels like an attempt to tell a story, but rather to just string songs together. Functionally, this Flower Drum Song is identical to Mamma Mia!, but this show, unlike that one, doesn't revel in reversing six decades of musical integration. It just never acknowledges that songs not written for situations in which they're used are never going to really work right in an entirely different story.

Some songs appear just misguided, as in Mei-Li's philosophy song, "A Hundred Million Miracles," staged as her trip to San Francisco or "My Best Love," cut before the original production's opening and assigned here (nonsensically) to a relatively minor character, Chin (Alvin Ing). Some songs are poorly cued from the dialogue, like "Grant Avenue," becoming Madame Liang's cheesy vision of the future or "I Am Going to Like It Here," (with its references to "the father's first son," though Wang apparently only has one). Others aren't really cued at all, like the nebulously positioned "Love, Look Away," a gorgeous song put over well by Salonga, but which makes no sense in the context of this story. The two numbers making up the night club sequence at the end of the first act do work well, though it's perhaps ironic their positioning has changed least from the original libretto.

Two other numbers, though, are flat-out embarrassing, Hwang and director Robert Longbottom forcing them into near parody of Rodgers's music and Hammerstein's lyrics. "I Enjoy Being a Girl" has become an embarrassing, overly long strip number for Allen, while "Chop Suey" finds Wang making his second act entrance in an enormous cardboard Chinese takeout box joined by women wearing light-up costumes and men dancing with giant chopsticks. But, as Wang has already been changed from a venerable father figure into a lazy comic device, none of this is really surprising."

Longbottom's direction and choreography are generally adequate but never exciting, despite echoes of his earlier and better work in Side Show and The Scarlet Pimpernel. He's allowed for a great deal of gaudy color, reflected mostly in Gregg Barnes's often striking costumes and occasionally in Robin Wagner's strangely staid sets and Natasha Katz's lighting, but it's never enough to make up for the flaws of the book.

But this Flower Drum Song does have two major assets. The first is its cast, led by Salonga, singing well and demonstrating the warmth and vulnerability necessary to make her character work. Llana is likable in a difficult role, and mismatched vocally with the music until his late second act solo, "Like a God." Long's keen comic sense is an asset to every scene she's in, adding lots of value to many of the cheap jokes, and Allen's Linda is attractive, if a bit underpowered. Kim, Ing, and Hoon Lee as Mei-Li's old-world friend are saddled with difficult roles but do fine by them, while only Allen Liu, playing the shamelessly stereotypical gay Harvard has real difficulty rising above the material.

The second asset is the most important, and the one that makes this Flower Drum Song enjoyable (at least in part), despite all its problems: its score of delightfully tuneful, varied songs. Though Don Sebesky's new orchestrations pale in comparison to Robert Russell Bennett's originals, the songs all bounce and lilt, lifting up the show in its dreariest moments - no one writes songs like these any more. Even if the songs themselves have been treated as chess pieces to be moved about indiscriminantly, hearing them sung in a theater by a good cast serves as a strong reminder of the power of good musical theatre writing.

You need reminders like that in this production of Flower Drum Song, perhaps the most visible example of the revival climate of 2002 Broadway. Perhaps appropriately, some of Hwang's words in the new libretto strike agonizingly true: "To create something new, you must first love what is old." Hwang and other writers seeking to revise or "improve" on the material of their predecessors should take those words to heart.


以下來自EMULE:
《花鼓戲》來自 C.Y. Lee (黎錦揚) 的同名小說，由 Oscar Hammerstein II 和 Joseph Fields 改寫成音樂劇，作曲 Richard Rodgers，作詞 Oscar Hammerstein II。該劇於1958年12月1日在紐約的聖詹姆士劇場(St. 詹姆士 Theatre)開演,在紐約百老匯連演六百場不衰，後來又在1960 年3月24日於倫敦的宮殿劇場(Palace Theatre)。在1961年，又由環球螢幕公司拍成電影，其中，扮演琳達的就是著名華裔演員關南施 (Nancy Kwan)。

2002 年，在前《亞裔雜誌》(A Magzine)發行人楊致和成立的Factor 公司的精心策劃下，《花鼓戲》在九月下旬重登紐約百老匯劇場的維珍尼亞劇院(維吉尼亞 Theatre)。這一次的劇本由東尼獎得獎劇作家黃哲倫創新改寫，也首次採用全部亞裔的演員陣容，包括扮演《西貢小姐》揚名的菲律賓演員 Lea Salonga 擔任女主角，和曾在音樂劇《國王與我》(The King and I) 中擔任主演的菲律賓籍演員 Jose Liana 扮演王大。該劇於2003年3月16日停止，但是已經有傳說要在北美開展巡迴演出。新劇的劇情和舊版略有不同，但是歌曲仍採用舊版。在下面的介紹是舊版的劇情。

雖然並不能算是 Rodgers 和 Hammerstein 合作的最成功的例子，《花鼓戲》的成就其實是不可忽視的。《花鼓戲》可是說是音樂喜劇的先驅，在當時題材嚴肅的音樂劇中獨樹一幟。而且，它也是屈指可數以中國人的生活為題材的音樂劇。

《花鼓戲》的故事取材於舊金山(San Francisco)唐人街上的中國人。故事圍繞著唐人街里幾代人的矛盾和代溝展開。在老一代人固執地堅持中國習俗的同時，在唐人街上長大的年輕人卻更認同美國人的思考方式和生活方式。不過，按照喜劇的傳統，大團圓的結尾必不可少，主人公也與心上人終成眷屬。

既然是屈指可數的以中國人為題材的音樂劇，在這裡就不能不多聊一下這部小說以及它的作者黎錦揚。

黎錦揚生於湖南，是著名語言學家黎錦熙三兄弟之一。他移民美國，在四十年代寫出了《花鼓戲》(Flower Drum Song，也譯做「花鼓歌」或「花鼓曲」)。他是繼林語堂之後第二個用英文寫書的華裔作家。他的最有名的作品無疑就是這部《花鼓戲》，他也在《紐約客》(紐約er) 雜誌上發表短篇小說，多數描寫 二戰末期滇緬一帶的風情，後來合成一集，叫《天之一角》。但是他也曾杜撰過一部名為《天讎》的反共小說，據說「其中一章描寫王光美被斗的慘狀，歷歷在目，著不覺渾身汗毛倒豎」，但是，其中的捕風捉影，刻意渲染的成份過多，只能算是政治工具，不能叫做文學。《花鼓戲》如何，本人不曾有幸讀過原著，拍成音樂劇後的故事想來是給改得面目全非，也不能作憑據，所以還得請讀過小說的看官聊一聊看法了。

本片曾獲第34屆學院獎藝術指導（彩色）、攝影（彩色）、服裝設計（彩色）、編曲（音樂劇類）、錄音5項提名。   舉報