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East-West Love. In the philosophical concept of Yang and Yin, the two elements grow and shrink each at the other's expense, but never wholly obliterate each ather, so that the end result is a kind of universal harmony. This is more or less what happens backstage at Flower Drum Song, according to testimony not only from pressagents—those untrustworthy upbeat philosophers—but according to anybody else connected with the show. And practically everybody gives the credit to the Oriental qualities of patience and politeness. Says Production Supervisor Jerry Whyte, a tough veteran of R. & H. shows since Oklahoma!: "I dread to think another show with two principals running nip and tuck like this one. But here you see no rivalry. They have a genuine friendship for each other."
The Oriental spell extends beyond Miyoshi and Pat. Wilbur, the stern-eyed stage-door guard, feels that the Oriental chorus girls are politer and less brassy than the usual types; the director and the choreographer feel that the whole cast is more disciplined and quicker to learn. Says Oscar Hammerstein: "It's a strange flavor they have. They don't fawn, they don't scrape, they listen carefully. I don't think they're any more intelligent than other people, but I think the intelligence is less obscured by neuroticism." Translates Dick Rodgers: "We have no nuts."
The East-West love feast that surrounds Flower Drum Song is no accident, for Rodgers and Hammerstein themselves have reached an almost Oriental serenity in an otherwise hectic and often squalid business. As much as any of their Chinese characters, R. & H. have family feeling. Since they have a permanent production outfit (unlike most other theater men, who fold up after each show), they have given employment to generations of performers. Example: one of Flower Drum's brightest young dancers, Patrick Adiarte, 15, started at eight as one of the younger children in The King and I, kept on playing the parts of older boys as he grew; meanwhile, his mother was a dancer in The King and I. As much as any of the Chinese in Flower Drum Song, R. & H. believe in tradition, have gone to the same opening-night party for 15 years (given by a friend, Jules Glaenzer, vice president of Carder's). On tour they still receive ceremonial visits from long-married and matronly chorus girls who were in one of their early shows.
If Wang Chi-yang, Flower Drum Song's venerable elder, likes the feel of money and distrusts outside financial institutions, so do Rodgers and Hammerstein. Where other producers more often than not must hunt down angels, R. & H. have the problem of fighting off outside investors, mostly use their own capital or that of family members and close friends. And they go about their business with Confucian calm; voices are virtually never raised at an R. & H. rehearsal, except in song.