Love and war in a spectacular Miss Saigon
Forget some awful lyrics and an uneasy political message, this is the ultimate in show-stopping spectaculars
I’m not convinced Miss Saigon is a great musical but Cameron Mackintosh’s production is an eye-popping humdinger that leaves you gasping in admiration at the sheer scale and expertise of the spectacle.
It reminds me of that old gag about leaving the theatre humming the scenery but, here, along with the awesome sets, you have dazzling colour, the confusion of war, precision marching, prostitutes capering in a seedy Saigon brothel, an even seedier one in Bangkok, huge symbolic images, and the ultimate in showstopping spectaculars – the stunning helicopter evacuation sequence as the American GIs rush to get out of Saigon when the North Vietnamese finally take over in 1975.
The show is essentially Puccini’s Madame Butterfly for the digital age but with much greater political impact.
Here, innocent Vietnamese teenager Kim falls for GI Chris and is abandoned with his child when he is forced to evacuate; but Chris, unlike Puccini’s sailor, is a decent bloke at heart.
And the departing Americans leave not just one deserted maiden but thousands of fatherless American-Vietnamese children and boatloads of people fleeing the country in the aftermath of the war, reminiscent of the latterday Mediterranean boat people.
My main problem with the show is the sung-through highvolume score, without dialogue, that gives an urgent sameness to all the music and detracts from the dramatic balance of the story, not to mention some dire lyrics, including this assessment of Kim’s son: ‘This kid is okay/ he’s our entrée/ to the USA.’
And I was uneasy about the stirring anthem Bui Doi – lamenting those deserted children, with accompanying real photographs – that almost sounds like an apology for the fact we might be enjoying the mixture of misery, bright lights and sexy shenanigans.
There are several good love songs, including the wedding ceremony but the most extravagantly staged and memorable number is The American Dream, an ironic hymn to the hedonistic joys of America, sung with sexual gusto by the slimeball pimp, Engineer, the dominant character in the show, who controls all the girls.
Red Concepcion balances the character’s repulsiveness with a thread of black humour.
The singing is first class throughout, especially by Sooha Kim as Kim and Ashley Gilmour as Chris, and the huge ensemble cast provide a memorable powerpacked extravaganza.
‘Eye-popping humdinger that leaves you gasping in admiration’