Direct from its smash London run, Cameron Mackintosh's stunning new production of Boublil and Schonberg's legendary musical Miss Saigon lands on Broadway in March, 2017, featuring its acclaimed stars Eva Noblezada and Jon Jon Briones.
Set in 1975 during the final days of the American occupation of Saigon, Miss Saigon is an epic love story about the relationship between an American GI and a young Vietnamese woman. Orphaned by war, 17-year-old Kim is forced to work as a bar girl in a sleazy Saigon nightclub, owned by a notorious wheeler-dealer known as "The Engineer." John, an American GI, buys his friend Chris the services of Kim for the night- a night that will change their lives forever.
Don't miss this "thrilling, soaring and spectacular" (The Times of London) musical when it returns to Broadway this spring for a limited engagement.
Stylistically, 'Miss Saigon' is a remnant of the bombastic, spectacle-driven, opera-meets-rock English mega-musicals that conquered Broadway in the '80s and '90s, such as 'Les Miz' and Andrew Lloyd Webber's 'Cats' and 'Phantom.' But as a piece of political theater that depicts Americans involved in a disastrous foreign war, cultural misunderstanding, the difficulties of emigrating to the U.S. as a refugee and the pursuit of success through shameless exploitation, 'Miss Saigon' is more relevant and heartbreaking today than when it premiered on Broadway in 1991 at the same theater.
The story feels more urgent amid renewed refugee tragedies and our consciousness of the sex trade. And the narrative - helped by unusually graceful lyrics by Boublil and Richard Maltby Jr. - almost distract from the generic Euro-pop ballads and anthems that sound like many we've heard before. There is still no distinction between the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese, with no explanation for the civil war, and the fake documentary showing real international orphans still strikes me as shameless.
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