NEW YORK — What trouble we get into, trying to build a better mousetrap. The urge to improve is understandable, even laudable. But what if something isn’t broken• If you love crispy fried chicken, you really don’t want someone turning it into pheasant. We’ll have to admit, however reluctantly, that “Flower Drum Song,” the penultimate of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein’s 11 musicals, needed surgery. I’m not prepared to join the chorus that says it was broken. The original 1958 Broadway production, directed by Gene Kelly, caught even Rodgers off guard with its successful 600-performance run, and the 1961 film version was a splashy hit, splendidly cast. But its timing was unlucky, and by the mid-1960s it had vanished from an American musical landscape that was succumbing to seismic rock changes and, in theater, at least, new notions of political correctness. Although the score was mid-level Rodgers and Hammerstein — a very high standard indeed — the book by Hammerstein and Joseph Fields lapsed into disfavor because of its quaint pidgin English and a whiff of unintentional condescension. Also, few communities had a sufficiently sizable platoon of major Chinese-American singers and dancers to populate local productions, and we had passed the point of casting Caucasians in Asian parts and doctoring their appearances with tape and makeup. And so the show was unofficially retired, taking with it one hit song, “You Are Beautiful,” which Johnny Mathis had popularized, two others that had been recorded by many artists (“I Enjoy Being a Girl” and the lovely “Love, Look Away”) and several that are infectious (“Don’t Marry Me,” “Chop Suey,” “A Hundred Million Miracles”). The keepers of the Rodgers and Hammerstein flame, eager to resuscitate the score’s buried jewels and give the neglected show its due, authorized the writing of a new book by playwright David Henry Hwang (“M. Butterfly”). Six years later — a full year after its Los Angeles tryout, “Flower Drum Song” finally has reached Broadway’s Virginia Theatre, looking passable (I wish I could be more enthusiastic about Robin Wagner’s tastefully spare sets), sounding good (if rarely soaring) and seeming awfully conflicted about its many changes, the least of which is its advance from the 1950s to 1960. No longer does the naive, backward Mei-Li come to San Francisco as a mail order bride with her papa. Now he’s killed in his homeland in the opening sequence by the Chinese Communists, and Mei-Li (Lea Solonga of “Miss Saigon”), no longer a bride-to-be, makes the trip in the steerage compartment of a freighter. Safely ashore in Chinatown, she is drawn into ongoing generational conflicts, superficial romantic entanglements and, especially, friction that pits traditionalism against assimilation. Although she is courted tepidly by the passionate Chao (Hoon Lee), who came over on the freighter with her, Mei-Li is drawn to Ta (Jose Llana), a conflicted second-generation Chinese American who runs a failing Chinese opera house with his conservative father, Wang (Randall Duk Kim). Once a week, Ta turns the performance venue into a nightclub that features the saucy Linda Low (Sandra Allen), for whom he has an unrequited lust. Influenced by the highly assimilated press agent Madame Liang (Jodi Long), Ta changes the nightclub from the traditional Golden Pearl Theatre to the tourist trap Club Chop Suey. “No more inscrutable Orientals,” Liang says. “We will give the tourists what they want, but we will have the last laugh.” Liang, whom Hwang created while throwing out other characters, is the fulcrum of the new “Flower Drum Song’s” revisionism. Her attitude — and the show’s — about feeding Club Chop Suey’s Caucasian patrons a stereotypically cute fantasy of Asian-Americans allows Hwang and director-choreographer Robert Longbottom to interpolate some of the songs no longer easily accommodated by the new script, including “I Enjoy Being a Girl,” “Chop Suey” and “Fan Tan Fannie.” It puts such songs into parentheses that distance the lyrics from the characters. In the process, the new version omits one song whose quaintness apparently couldn’t be salvaged (“The Other Generation”), restores one that was cut in 1958 (“My Best Love”) and keeps one that was in the original stage production but omitted from the movie (“Like a God”). The wholesale rearranging, though, and especially the elimination of some characters, has resulted in songs being put into other characters’ mouths, including “Love, Look Away.” Two others (“A Hundred Million Miracles” and “I Am Going to Like It Here”) are staged with an irony that runs counter to their original intent. Hwang has added a gay costume designer named Harvard (Allen Liu) who, however innocuous, would have given the show’s creators pause. After the first hour, the characters begin swapping philosophical positions with a regularity and relative lack of motivation that is more schematic than persuasive and with romantic bonds that are more announced than developed. The suddenly showbiz-savvy Wang even takes a new name, Sammy Fong. Between the befores and afters of five characters, none of whom is especially well defined, we lose track of who they are, or think they are. For all of these reservations about renovation, it’s still very pleasing to have “Flower Drum Song” back on a stage, with live song renditions and patches of strong staging, including the new opening in China. The pleasures of a Rodgers and Hammerstein score easily override misgivings. (Would someone please revive their “Pipe Dream,” “Me and Juliet” and, especially, “Allegro”?) Most of the leading performers could use more verve, more personal definition, which could only help lead the audience through the production’s vaguely schizophrenic maze. Still, charm abounds, and in the end, the thrill of rediscovery triumphs.

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