Miss Saigon – REVIEW
Image: Abigail Adriano (Kim) in the Australian production of Miss Saigon - Photo by Daniel Boud
From the West End to Broadway and now finally to our shores, Cameron Mackintosh’s revamped production of Miss Saigon is a stunning spectacle that is wowing Sydney audiences. Co-presented by Opera Australia and staged on their home turf, the Joan Sutherland Theatre, this mounting of Miss Saigon is big and brash, yet still very poignant.
Miss Saigon is set in Vietnam around 1975, towards the end of the brutal war between the North and South. Much of the action takes place in a bar/brothel run by an enterprising young Vietnamese man known as The Engineer, played with magnificent flamboyance by Seann Miley Moore. Kim (Abigail Adriano) is an orphaned 17-year-old bar worker whom The Engineer is trying to sell for sex at a premium rate due to her youth and “innocence”.
Chris (Nigel Huckle), and American GI, meets and is smitten by Kim and they soon fall in love, spending all their free time together. When Saigon begins to fall, the American soldiers are evacuated suddenly and dramatically and Kim and Chris do not get to say goodbye.
It is three years before any contact is made again. Chris has since remarried, having lost faith in ever reuniting with Kim. Unbeknown to Chris, Kim has given birth to and raised their son, now almost three years old. Chris finally learns of the child through his friend, John, (Nick Afoa) who has set up the Bui Doi Foundation to help identify and re-unite Vietnamese children of American soldiers.
Unsure what to do, Chris returns to Vietnam with his American wife, Ellen (Kerrie Anne Greenland). When Kim meets Ellen and realises the truth, she surrenders the child, knowing he will have a better life in America. She seals his fate by taking her own life.
Cameron Mackintosh’s production of Miss Saigon uses all the theatrical devices and technical know-how available to co-producers, Opera Australia. The sets are vibrant, detailed, coloured with broad-strokes (if usually by lights and projections). There are several impressively choreographed dance scenes and the design makes great use of vertical as well as horizontal space.
The famous evacuation scene, with its realistic helicopter, is a crowd-pleaser and very effective.
Arguably, the most spectacular and enjoyable scenes involve the uber camp Moore. As The Engineer, Moore is at the centre of the action, much like the MC in Cabaret. His rendition, and of course, the ensemble and choreography of, “The American Dream” is one of the highlights of the show.
Adriano is equally powerful though in a much more tender and emotionally thrilling way. Her voice is sweet and intense, and her acting is affecting. The scene with Ellen in the hotel room is utterly heart-breaking. For her part, Greenland as Ellen is also impressive, despite the few appearances her character makes.
Huckle as Chris is strong and convincing, with piercing sentiment in his singing, and adept handling of the complex emotions of his character.
Laurence Mossman is notable as Thuy, a man who can’t consolidate the manifest power of his position with the powerlessness of his unrequited love for Kim.
Kimberley Hodgson is delightfully decadent and mischievous as Gigi.
This is a huge production with an exceptional cast and the infallible formula of Schönberg and Boublil behind the words and music.
