REVIEW: Cameron Mackintosh's Revival of MISS SAIGON Arrives In Sydney With A Stronger Focus On The Fallout Of American Arrogance

Friday 25th August 2023, 7:30pm, Joan Sutherland Theatre Sydney Opera House

Presented by Opera Australia, Cameron Mackintosh’s Revival of MISS SAIGON reunites the creatives from the 2004 Touring Production, which reached Australia in 2007, to reincorporate elements of the 1989 West End original while shifting the focus to make a more powerful message than the central love story.  The second blockbuster musical from Claude-Michel Schönberg (Book and Music) and Alain Boublil (Book and Lyrics) following LES MISERABLES, this time with additional lyrics from Richard Maltby Jr, shares another love story against the backdrop of war with the added commentary on American Military intervention and overall arrogance in terms of dealing with non-western people.

MISS SAIGON is understood to be inspired by Schönberg’s fascination with Puccini’s MADAMA BUTTERFLY with the 17-year-old orphaned Kim (Abigail Adriano) corresponding to Puccini’s Butterfly while American Marine Chris (Nigel Huckle) is Pinkerton.  In the days after the 23rd of April 1975, the day American President Gerald Ford declared the end of the Vietnam War and that all US Aid would be withdrawn from the country, Chris and his mate John (Nick Afoa) spend another night at “Dreamland”, the local bar and brothel run by the flamboyant French-Vietnamese local who goes by the moniker “The Engineer”(Seann Miley Moore), for his ability to “engineer” solutions through graft and corruption. Knowing that the gravy train of cashed up American Soldiers was going to dry up soon, The Engineer takes the opportunity to drive up the price for the opportunity to spend a night with his latest ‘recruit’, the innocent Kim.  Despite Chris’ reluctance to accept the ‘gift’ from John, he spends the night with Kim and despite the awareness that he’s supposed to be shipping out within days, the two fall in love, going so far as to participate in a traditional wedding but he is forced to leave her behind when he can’t find her before he’s required to board the last helicopter lifting foreign forces out of the US Embassy in the iconic Operation Frequent Wind. 

Under Laurence Connor’s direction, his 2004 Touring production staging is revived and tweaked while the element that restricted Nicholas Hytner’s original 1989 production from being able to tour extensively, the helicopter that descends to hover over the stage to recreate Hubert Van Es’ iconic image, is reinstated.  Adrian Vaux’s design concept is retained from the 2004 production with tweaks to make the story clear and also make scenes like John’s launch of the Bui Doi Foundation making him seem more empathic, delivering his message to a gathering of his peers rather than from behind a lectern, allowing the realization of how manipulative and unsensitive he really was and is to the Vietnamese to really shine when history is revealed.  While Andreane Neofitou’s has stayed as Costume Designer since the 1989 West End Production the costumes have been subtly updated with elements like the symbolism of Kym’s Ao Dai now being white on white compared to the earlier pastel pattern and Chris’ new American wife Ellen (Kerrie Anne Greenland) now being a classic American ‘girl next door’ blonde to be an even greater contrast to Kim.  Mick Potter’s sound design is powerful, filling the Joan Sutherland Theatre with gunfire, bombs and helicopters.  The only downfall on opening night was some of the sound cues in the opening numbers, leaving The Engineer unintelligible when his line was not opened in time.  Bruno Poet’s lighting extends the work beyond the proscenium to reinforce things like spotlights and torchlights searching. He ensures that there is a clear understanding that domestic spaces are dark and dingy slums in comparison to The Engineer’s flash bars that are filled with colored lights and signs. 

Previously MISS SAIGON felt more weighted to the love story and the tragedy between Kim and Chris but this iteration shifts the focus to be more of a commentary on the American engagement in foreign conflicts and their view that they are saviors of foreign countries until such time that their government decides to leave then they pack up and leave with no apparent care for the locals that have come to rely on their support and protection.  The dramatized pushing back of the locals at the gates of the US Embassy was drawn from real events like the image of US Marines using rifle butts to smash fingers of people trying to climb the fence to get to the helicopter airlifts.  Whilst this production premiered in 2014, these scenes that play out on stage echo the more recent images of the withdrawal of US Armed forces out of Afghanistan that ended on the 30th of August 2021, reinforcing that the US continue to leave war zones unresolved.  Through Sean Miley Moore’s brilliant performance as The Engineer, the arrogance, greed and excess of the Americans is also highlighted as all the things that the highly corrupt ‘entrepreneur’ aspires to.  Through Nick Afoa’s presentation of John, the insensitivity and callous disregard for life because the Vietnamese are not what he sees as American is highlighted when he tells Chris to forget Kim and that she was only for a night, not to take home.  It also highlights the callous disregard for people in the attitude that the likes of John have for the women, treating them as objects and discounting them for what they need to do to survive, an attitude that is somewhat in contrast to Chris who realizes the magnitude of what sleeping with Kim has, though he ends up doing it in the end.  His later feeling of shame and need to hide his relationship with Kim from Ellen also reveals his attitudes.  While some may see Ellen’s eventual embrace of Chris and Kim’s child, Tam (role shared by 6 children) as altruistic, her insensitivity, her insecurity that she couldn’t live with them repatriating both Kim and Tam, and her belief that her love for Chris was more important, discounting Kim as just one night years ago, and her marriage vows were worth more than Kim’s led to Kim making the ultimate sacrifice to secure her child’s future. 

The standouts of this production are Seann Miley Moore’s expression of The Engineer as they draw on their genderfluid appearance to push the boundaries and make the pimp and club owner ooze sex appeal and innuendo while always feeling like The Engineer is hiding something, creating a façade and image to suit the situation.  Newcomer Abigail Adriano delivers a captivating Kim, allowing her to grow from the innocent 17 year old forced to work for The Engineer to survive when her parents are killed, to having a strength and confidence that drives her desire to protect her child and give him the future he deserves.  She has a beautiful pure voice that holds power and gravitas when required.  Kimberley Hodgson brings a more operatic classical tone to Gigi’s part in “The Movie In My Mind”.  Nigel Huckle’s rendition of Chris’ “Why God Why?” is tender but balance an air of strong masculine with sensitive and sweet. 

This updated production of MISS SAIGON is an interesting new retelling of the story and its good to see it make more of a statement than simply being a love story.  Drawing on real events from the last days of the Vietnam War, from Operation Frequent Wind to the Re-Education Camps that would follow, and the stories of children fathered by US soldiers, an image of one such separation of a mother sending her child to be cared for my its American father providing inspiration for the adaptation of MADAME BUTTERFLY for a modern age, this story retains a relevance as history has already repeated itself.  An opera worthy love story and tragedy, though thankfully not a prolonged death aria, with music from the team that created LES MISERABLES, with phrasing and elements that carry Schönberg and Boublil’s ‘signature’, this production of MISS SAIGON is worth catching, and when else can you witness a helicopter inside the sails of the Opera House.

https://opera.org.au/productions/miss-saigon-sydney/

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