April 11, 1997
The touring version of Miss Saigon is currently playing in Orlando at The Bob Carr Performing Arts Centre. Except for shining performances by the leading lady and two supporting actors, I found nothing really special about this production. It is well worth the money, however, since these three performances are good and the special effects, as always, are incredible.
For those of you who don't know, Miss Saigon is a tragic love story of a Vietnamese girl and an American soldier. During less than friendly times, Chris and Kim meet and fall in love, innocently, in a brothel run by the musical's pseudo-storyteller, The Engineer. The city of Saigon falls, and Chris loses his newlywed in the mob of orders and refugees. Kim is then left with a child and no husband in the now communist Vietnam.
Alain Boubil and Claude-Michel Schonberg fill their musical with odd juxtapositions of beauty and ugliness, both musically and visually. This is just a well written play; it's hard to not do it well unless, of course, the actors become patronizing towards the subject, which may have happened in this touring version. (I do suspect, though, because Orlando is such a conservative town, that they toned down the "I hate America and all it stands for" aspect of the play).
One great example of this is The Engineer's showstopper, "The American Dream." He says he smells its stench and the audience laughs. Was I the only one who found this reaction strange? However, the play is good, so I now give you my top ten reasons to see Miss Saigon at the Bob Carr Performing Arts Centre.
Ultimately, what's so uncomfortable about this musical is that we don't want to deal with this side of the story (you know: the other woman, our enemies, etc.). This play shows the real victims of the Vietnam situation (it wasn't a war, by the way) and that can be a little hard to take, especially when we see ourselves in those victims.
|
