Word: flower
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Financially speaking, of course, Mr. Hammerstein and his friends can't do it again: Flower Drum Song is already sold out solid for its four and a half weeks in Boston, and promises to do correspondingly well in New York. But from the aesthetic stand-point, Oliver Smith's pretty sets, some of Carol Haney's choreography, and a few nice songs and pleasant performances are the only silky spots on a lavishly gilded...
...their voices. But nobody ever complained about the acoustics: Architect Cady had the good sense to face the auditorium with wood and to build an egg-shaped masonry sound chamber beneath the orchestra pit. During its early years, the Met removed the seats, held charity balls and a flower show on the orchestra floor. When Impresario Henry Abbey lost $600,000 in the house's first season, he recouped some of his losses by tossing in a special variety show at which Soprano Marcella Sembrich played a violin concerto, moved to the piano to rip off a Chopin mazurka...
...young unemployed actress last week, "you haven't a prayer of getting a job." Cause of her complaint: Broadway is going heavily Oriental this season. The World of Suzie Wong (see THEATER) is only the first of a Far East catalogue that includes such forthcoming items as Flower Drum Song, Rashomon, Kataki, Cry for Happy and the umpteenth revival of The Shanghai Gesture. Even the small, off-Broadway houses are braced for the Oriental invasion, with three versions of classic Japanese No drama...
...Kaie Deei, a part-Egyptian, part-Zulu agent, who specialized in Negroes, Orientals and American Indians). Agent Rivers is finding the white man's burden heavy. Biggest problem: Asians tend to act with rigidity and gliding formalism. To fill the part of Sammy Fong, unofficial mayor of Chinatown, Flower Drum's Casting Director Ed Blum finally had to cross the color line and hire Manhattan Comedian Larry Storch. "The part calls for a sharpie," says Blum, "and the Orientals can't play it. Smoothie, yes; sharpie, no." Otherwise, Blum's cast is out of character only...
Both Suzie and Flower Drum hired the same speech expert, Professor Simon Mitchneck of Columbia, to turn Oriental inflections into speech that is understandable to American audiences. He is currently working with Japan's Miyoshi Umeki and the rest of the cast of Flower Drum, shaving vowels, changing consonants, even breaking Comedian Storch of his New Yorkese. Just about the only time Agent Rivers got off the Oriental beat this season was when Producers Feuer and Martin insisted that they would cast their new musical Whoop-Up only with full-blooded Indians. "I scoured the area," says Rivers...