Reflections: My MISS SAIGON Story

Manila, Philippines--For some people, it may take just one special song to change their lives forever. Take for instance Tony winner, Disney Legend Lea Salonga and BroadwayWorld.com (BWW) UK's 2014 Best Featured Actress Rachelle Ann Go's personal revelations on the endless impact that MISS SAIGON has had on their personal and professional lives.

But for ordinary people like me, it took one entire musical to change the course of mine--not that it's anything to complain about--given that my most likely extent of any intimate involvement with theater is my late indoctrination into the world of musicals, in the form of a 22-year-old overwound cassette tape of MISS SAIGON's Original London Cast Recording.

At the tender age of 13--with the music and words to "Sun and Moon" and "Why God Why?" subliminally embedding themselves into my subconscious--there were only two "musical" facts I was certain of:

FACT ONE: Any pubescent understanding I had of MISS SAIGON then wasn't as important to me as how Cameron Mackintosh, Alain Boublil, and Claude Michel Schonberg aligned Broadway and West End's radars to zero in on the Philippines as a veritable treasure trove of world-class musical talents, upon their discovery of Lea Salonga.

FACT TWO: Lea Salonga cemented her position as one of my favorite people in the world when she began work on "Aladdin." I even remember reading somewhere that she got personally approached by the Disney people backstage after a MISS SAIGON performance on Broadway. To this day, the extra five-minute wait inside the movie theater for Lea's name to roll up in "Aladdin's" end credits remains a strong childhood memory.

Lea Salonga - The Accidental Life Coach

I've always been on Team Lea.

The stage of Lea Salonga's "Your Songs" concert--five Christmases ago at the Philippine International Convention Center (PICC)--is where my MISS SAIGON backstory actually unravels, with an an all-too-surreal encounter with the original Kim, as I played Aladdin to her Princess Jasmine in her Disney classic "A Whole New World."

In a matter of months, I found myself seriously considering singing as a career option, and found myself embarking on a re-invigorated return to the life of an overseas performing artist. That life-altering moment single-handedly took me through four straight years of overlapping contract extensions performing in bars and hotels across Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, and Cambodia and had me literally and figuratively singing for my dinner.

But more important than those accumulated dinners raised from singing was an expanded network of friends and colleagues I acquired after that night at PICC. One which steadily expanded from Oliver Oliveros (who was to become my Regional Editor at BWW after I covered "Wicked's" Manila run) and extended to Concertus Manila's Executive Producer Bambi Rivera-Verzo, who tapped me to join the London-bound five-day media tour that she, together with her team, had arranged for other West End shows that Lunchbox Theatrical Productions is bringing to Manila; that very same trip also allowed me to see MISS SAIGON--its 25th anniversary production--for the very first time.

In a chance encounter with Lea at a gym in October 2013, she asks in unfettered interest, "But the important thing is that you're happy, are you happy?"--after I catch up with her on what I've been up to since her 2009 concert.

It surprised me that the perfunctorily polite "Yes, I'm happy" reply came after an awkward, longer-than-intended thoughtful pause.

As we move back to our respective workout stations, she flashes another dimpled smile and says, "Well, just as long as you're happy."

That infinitesimal delay of a semi-enthusiastic reply to Lea's straightforward question set off a slew of events, which had expansive, life-altering repercussions for me--for one, it put me on the road of career re-evaluation.

In an interesting twist contrary to what her coaching does for the members of Team Lea on the local edition of "The Voice," her words that afternoon moved someone to choose a different path: one that does not have a stage and a microphone waiting for him on the other side.

You have to hand it to Lea though (in a not so surprising parallel to Mary Poppins and the wind of change that follows her), something grand always happens whenever she's around-- you can count on it whether you're with her on a sophisticated concert stage or even at your local gym outlet.

The Gold Ticket of the Season

If 2014 is to leave any lasting legacies my way, it is the realization that all the roads that I had taken (regardless of varying degrees of relevance to the creative and performing arts) have all miraculously converged to my very first travel to the UK, on that night of May 28 in a specially-reserved aisle seat at West End's Prince Edward Theatre.

Earlier that evening--by some forgiving glitch in time and space continuum--I somehow managed to wrap up my first exclusive interview for BWW with MISS SAIGON's Rachelle Ann Go, and still made it to another West End Theatre to do another interview.

There were seven of us--composed of members of the Philippine media--who were able to score the prized MISS SAIGON tickets that midweek, and typical to newly-opened blockbusters, getting good seats on such rush booking is a feat that calls for persistence, patience, and a lot of prayers.

Beyond MISS SAIGON's Dreamland Spectacle

The stage curtains rise to the scintillating opening bars of the "Heat is On in Saigon," heavily colored by the gyrating sleaze carousel of G.I.s, bargirls, and crossdressers, all masking a heartbreaking look into the casualties of war, greed, and prostitution during the Vietnam War.

With each succeeding performance defining and introducing itself as the long-missing, visual counterpart to the songs I first came to know from years of listening to that 1989 original cast album (and performing some of them in school pageants), it became clearer that the success story of MISS SAIGON has actually very little to do with the stunning theatrics that make it the mega-musical that it is. That iconic helicopter as the symbol of the two-faced salvation for the G.I.s and the lovers they leave behind, or the "The American Dream's" brazen flaunting of modern-day consumerism both take a backseat to the show's real stars: the dreams and hopes that MISS SAIGON has made real for all those people whose lives it continues to touch after all these years--all anchored onto the sad triumph forged through Kim's ultimate sacrifice.

The production that night--like the critically-praised performances of the cast led by principal actors Eva Noblezada (Kim), Jon Jon Briones (The Engineer), and the dramatically featured Rachelle Ann Go (Gigi)--intoxicates, writhes, goads, and moves the senses with each turn of plot and lyric and commands veneration in each musical movement.

By the time a reverberating gunshot blares all over the theater, signaling Kim's final scene in Act Two, the emotional upheaval from two hours of MISS SAIGON had manifested itself in actual physical weariness--one I had only previously known after watching alternative rockstar Björk in her award-winning turn as Selma in Lars Von Trier's 2000 drama-musical film "Dancer in the Dark."

With a refreshing modesty in contrast to its long outstanding grandeur, MISS SAIGON subtly compels you into a bitingly crisp, almost total awareness of what is transpiring onstage--pushed by the well-oiled synchronicity of its dazzling stage movements, effects, and lighting--while subliminally affording you the luxury of looking away if the tragedy (in the tradition of voluminous theatrical sensibility) becomes too intense to grapple with. But however generous the show is in this respect, it still works well.

There remains an indefinable confidence in its subdued authority--the show knows its theatergoers, in that even if its creators' vision would choose to linger on the peripheral, the saga of its music and resonance of its drama persists as a palpable force that leaves thick residuals in the theatre's very air--so encompassing and dense that it sticks to your very skin.

It's no surprise that MISS SAIGON's reputation looms larger than any stage it occupies, even the 1989 casting of Lea in the lead would rival David O. Selznick's mammoth Scarlett O'Hara headhunt. But beyond that, it's also important to understand MISS SAIGON as the cross-cultural phenomenon that it actually is. Never before has there ever been a musical that has given so much to a country and its culture than what MISS SAIGON has given to the Philippines in terms of talent recognition and validation. This may be a little-known fact that most critics may not necessarily fully comprehend, but ask any red-blooded Filipino and he will be sure to tell you that MISS SAIGON is one of the very rare international enterprises that he embraces as his own.

25 years is an outstanding age for any musical to reach, but then again I'm not strictly a theater person--I'm still learning the ropes--and can only count in run-of-the-mill human years. But after having been schooled in the basics of musical theater by listening to the music of MISS SAIGON for over 20 years, and after finally being able to experience it in its pulsating glory, there's a third indisputable fact I feel needs to be added to my growing two-point repertoire of musical facts:

FACT THREE: MISS SAIGON is forever.

Visit miss-saigon.com.

Special thanks to:

Bambi Rivera-Verzo, Oliver Oliveros, Rachelle Ann Go, and Lea Salonga