The team hired Gene Kelly to make his debut as a stage director with the musical and scoured the country for a suitable Asian – or at least, plausibly Asian-looking – cast.

The piece did not return to Broadway until 2002, when a version with a plot by playwright David Henry Hwang (but retaining most of the original songs) was presented after a successful Los Angeles run.

In the end, taking his son's advice, Wang decides not to go to the herbalist to seek a remedy for his cough, but walks to a Chinese-run Western clinic, symbolizing that he is beginning to accept American culture.

[4] Rodgers and Hammerstein, despite extraordinary successes earlier in their partnership, such as Oklahoma!, Carousel and South Pacific, had suffered back-to-back Broadway relative failures in the mid-1950s with Me and Juliet and Pipe Dream.

[17] Though the new story was less artistically adventurous than the earlier Rodgers and Hammerstein hits, it was innovative, even daring in its treatment of Asian-Americans, "an ethnic group that had long been harshly caricatured and marginalized in our mainstream pop culture.

"[14] Act I: Wang Ta, a young Chinese-American man living in his father's house in San Francisco's Chinatown, discusses the problems of finding a wife with his aunt, Madam Liang ("You Are Beautiful") before hurrying off on a blind date.

Sammy has taken the liberty of bringing the girl and her father with him; Wang is charmed ("A Hundred Million Miracles") and invites them to live in his home on the understanding that if the proposed marriage falls through, Fong will still be bound to marry Mei Li.

Ta, knowing that Chinese-Americans with college degrees find it hard to get a job befitting their education, plans to go to law school, postponing the likely career struggle by three years.

Sammy quickly strikes back by inviting the Wangs, Mei Li and her father to watch the show at his "Celestial Bar" ("Fan Tan Fannie").

[27] The role of Madam Liang, Master Wang's sister-in-law, fell to Juanita Hall, a light-skinned African American who had played a Tonkinese (Vietnamese) woman, Bloody Mary, in South Pacific.

Ask them to accept Ezio Pinza as a Frenchman [in South Pacific], Yul Brynner as Siamese and they are prepared to meet you nine tenths of the way even before the curtain goes up.

Author C. Y. Lee, who had quietly watched the rehearsals, recalled that, at the Boston performances, Hammerstein would have a secretary mark on the script any sound of the chairs squeaking, as indicating that the audience was restless.

It was overshadowed that year by Redhead, which though it received only slightly better reviews than Flower Drum Song and had a considerably shorter run, dominated the Tony Awards in the musical categories.

[39] Fewer Asian performers were used in London; the West End production starred Yau Shan Tung as Mei Li, Kevin Scott as Ta, George Minami as Wang, Harriet Yamasaki ("Yama Saki")[40] as Linda Low, Tim Herbert as Sammy Fong and Ida Shepley as Madam Liang.

That summer, the San Diego Civic Light Opera filled the 4,324-seat Balboa Park Bowl to overflowing for a highly successful run of the musical.

[2] In addition, producers found the show to be thinly plotted, and the songs not integrated as organically with the characters and story, as compared with Rodgers and Hammerstein's most popular musicals.

[56] They added a scene in which Mei Li listens apprehensively to a radio broadcast warning about the dangers to the United States caused by Asian immigration.

'It was kind of a guilty pleasure ... and one of the only big Hollywood films where you could see a lot of really good Asian actors onscreen, singing and dancing and cracking jokes.

"[62] Rodgers' will urged his heirs to do what they believed he would have agreed to (Hammerstein's instructions are unknown), but during her lifetime, his widow Dorothy had refused to countenance major changes in the plays.

[14] According to The New York Times, Hwang "has reshaped the story to elucidate two of his own abiding thematic interests: the idea of the theater as a prism for society and the generational clashes of diversely assimilated immigrants.

[79] Critic Karen Wada, in her afterword to the published script, blamed "the sluggish economy, post-September 11 jitters, the New York Times' mixed review, and unusually bitter winter weather" for the unexpectedly short run.

[81] Subsequent productions have favored the Hwang script, although the older version remains available for license[82] and has received occasional revivals, including a 2006 staged concert as part of Ian Marshall Fisher's Lost Musicals series.

"[83] Prologue: In 1960, Wu Mei-li, a performer in Chinese opera, flees China with a flower drum after her father dies in prison for defying the Communists ("A Hundred Million Miracles").

For example, New York Journal American critic John McClain stated, "Flower Drum Song is a big fat Rodgers and Hammerstein hit, and nothing written here will have the slightest effect on the proceeds.

[87] Ward Morehouse applauded Suzuki for having "a brassy voice and the assurance of a younger Ethel Merman" and termed the production "an excellent Broadway show" though "[p]erhaps it doesn't belong in the same world ... as The King and I and Carousel.

[46] Michael Phillips of the Los Angeles Times called the show "wholly revised and gleefully self-aware ... a few tons short of a mega-musical – no fake helicopters here, no power ballads saccharine enough to stop Communism in its tracks.

[90] Ben Brantley of The New York Times applauded the creative team's "honorable intentions" in bringing back a work thought to be "terminally out-of-date", but felt both the new Mei-li and the show in general lacked personality.

The CurtainUp review was mostly positive and observed that Hwang and Longbottom "were able to keep numbers like 'Chop Suey' and milk it for its razzle-dazzle fun while using its condescending stereotyping as a springboard to satirize attitudes towards Asians.

[94] According to Ben Brantley in his review of the 2002 Broadway revival, the use by Rodgers "of repetitive Eastern musical structures gives the numbers a sing-song catchiness that, for better or worse, exerts a sticky hold on the memory.

[30][94] One critic thought that the 2001 version's orchestrations "boast more Asian accents and a jazzier edge than the original",[14] but another felt that they "pale in comparison" to Bennett's typically lilting sound.