There are at least three versions of the musical “Flower Drum Song” in the world, and the main thing they have in common are the songs of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II.

The musical was first based on a 1957 novel by C.Y. Lee, became a not very successful Broadway musical in 1958, then became the first American movie with a mostly ethnically Asian cast in 1961, then was adapted in 2001 by David Henry Hwang (“M. Butterfly,” “Yellow Face,” “Chinglish,” among others).

Hwang’s update “took back the story to better represent the Chinese immigrant experience in the United States,” said Lily Tung Crystal, who is directing the show for Palo Alto Players. “The original musical was written by white men. The depiction of Chinese immigrant men and women was quite shallow and stereotypical.”

But, she added, the movie marked “the first time I saw people like me on film. When I started watching the movie, I thought, ‘Wow, this Chinese American story is amazing.’

“David’s rewrites helped depict the Chinese-American experience, and the Asian-American experience, in entertainment. It’s about finding identity as an Asian American, and the gap between Chinese immigrants and their American-born children.

“David was able to own that story.”

Like Hwang, Crystal is the child of immigrants from China. Her mother is the daughter of a three-star general who served under Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek. Crystal’s parents spoke Chinese in the home, in an effort to teach the language to their children.

Crystal said she is “conversationally fluent in Chinese.”

Raised in Palo Verdes, in Southern California, Crystal went to Cornell University, where she earned a degree in English, then moved to Shanghai.

“I was there from 1991 to 1999, off and on,” she said during a recent phone interview from her San Francisco home. “Shanghai was kind of like the Wild West, changing very rapidly. The only thing that was consistent in China was change. It was a chaotic existence. But with all the building, it was getting very cosmopolitan.”

Her work, she said, was “super interesting.” She was the launching editor of Shanghai Talk magazine, the city’s first English-language magazine. She also freelanced for U.S. and British organizations, such as NBC News, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal.

She did some acting and singing while in Shanghai. She was in a rock and blues band, and played Amanda in Noel Coward’s “Private Lives.”

She returned to the United States in 2000, and in 2002, took classes at A.C.T. in San Francisco, and started auditioning. She mostly worked in musicals, but since she joined Actors Equity in 2009, mostly does straight plays.

It was Patrick Klein, artistic director at Palo Alto Players, who talked her into directing.

“I was acting in a regional tour of ‘Chinglish.’ Patrick Klein emailed me and said he’d gotten my name from Jeffrey Lo (playwright, director). He asked me if I would be interested in directing ‘Chinglish.’ I wrote back, saying, ‘I’m an actor, not a director, but I can recommend these other Asian American artists. We talked by phone, then met in person, and I said, ‘I’m still not a director, and he said, ‘We like your thoughts about the play, and we want you to direct it.’

“I had never even thought about directing, but he was just very stubborn about pursuing me. He said some of the best directors were actors, and that he could guide me through the process. I thought about it for a couple of weeks, then accepted. One reason I felt safe taking this on as my first directing job was that I knew ‘Chinglish’ so well.”

The show was a big success, selling a lot of tickets and picking up a number of award nominations.

Then Klein asked her to direct again: “Flower Drum Song.”

“I’m feeling really good about it,” she said. “We have a talented cast. We are getting to the heart of the story, the immigrants and Chinese-American part of the story. There are some deep themes, about identity and discrimination. We’re bringing all that out.”

“Flower Drum Song” is about a time in the 1930s to early 1950s, when new immigrants from China, who brought with them Chinese operas and “flower drum songs,” were in conflict with a younger generation who wanted the livelier music of the “chop suey circuit” entertainers. The latter form of entertainment made money. The operas did not.

“The chop suey circuit clubs in Chinatown in the ‘40s and ‘50s included performers of many Asian, Pacific Islander ethnicities,” said Crystal, “including Filipinos, Japanese and Koreans. Many of them changed their names to be more Chinese-sounding so they could market themselves better, and also, in some cases, to escape internment” (as happened with Japanese-Americans).

“So, it’s actually historically accurate to have not only Chinese performers (in the ‘Flower Drum Song’ cast), but performers from around the Asian diaspora in the chop suey clubs.”

The Players production directed by Crystal has a cast of 20 performers, all from the Bay Area, and all part of the Asian diaspora.

The show “is representative of Asian Americans. We brought in a dialect coach and other cultural consultants. We’d like to give a really good representation of issues surrounding identity,” said Crystal.

“The original was in the 1950s, and David rewrote in it in 2002. Now, when immigration is such a contentious topic, David’s script really speaks to that.”

John Orr is a member of the America Theatre Critics Association. Email him at johnorr@regardingarts.com.

Theater

What: “Flower Drum Song”

By: Adapted by David Henry Hwang from Rodgers and Hammerstein and novelist C.Y. Lee

Directed by: Lily Tung Crystal

Featuring: Emily Song, Bryan Pangilnan, Joey Alvarado, Jomar Martinez, Bryan Munar, Marah Sotelo, Melinda Meeng, John Paul Kilecdi-Li

Where: Lucie Stern Theatre, 1305 Middlefield Road, Palo Alto

When: April 26- May 12, 2019

Tickets: $25-$55; www.paplayers.org, or 650-329-0891