Along with the film Casablanca Miss Saigon is the one work which I can experience time and time again. When it opened in 1989 I had on impulse gone to see if I could get a ticket for a matinee performance after a morning meeting of a national committee. As the start approached and there was still a number of others waiting a young woman jumped out of a taxi and said she had spare ticket for the stalls for which I willing paid the full price arriving at our good seats just as the curtain was rising. At the interval she complained it was Madam Butterfly, true but only at the level of the basic story and where I believe she failed to appreciate the great tunes and the political aspects of USA imperialism in Asia. My family had been to see Les Miserables on a family visit to London and I had gone to see Les Miss on my own, not appreciating its length and having to leave early to meet up with the family for the evening performance of Miss Saigon. Of course this meant going to see Les Miserables again as well as seeing Miss Saigon at least once or even twice after that. I remain convinced that I have written about the work before but cannot presently locate the evidence and could not find wo tape recording of the show among the 200 tapes in my collection which is odd.
You
Tube has come to rescue with the full sound track while I write. The musical retains
its hold because of the music, the song, the story and its topicality with the
Syrian boat people replacing those from Vietnam as they made their way to
Bangkok and onwards to the USA and to here in the UK. Most of all the musical
remains important to me and others who because of parental and subsequent
circumstances feel ourselves to belong to the Bui Doi, the dust of life
children without a meaningful identity and without a meaningful home. On Sunday 16th of October the relay
was in fact a film of the actual anniversary production which took place the
previous month.
The
latest production makes the use of back screen projection but all the element
of the original production is included where in the after show it was admitted that
over the year’s emphasis of the acting has become stronger and I felt there is
now an even greater edge to the production than the original.
I
saw Lee Solanga in the title role of Kim, Miss Saigon as a 17-year-old and she
returned to the stage as a mature middle aged person with all the ability to
project the emotion of experience she will not have had in the first
production. Lee vied as the star of show
with Jonathan Pryce who played the Vietnamese bar owner, brothel keeper, pimp
and fixer, the Engineer, for which he won awards, and I found that in some
respects the new Kim is outshone by the latest ethnic correct actor who is brilliant
as Engineer and praised by Jonathan Pryce who made some great jokes introducing
the dancing girls for the showing stopping number towards the end, The American
Dream as his careers. Humour there was but despite the glitz of the spectacle
this is a very serious work of timeless significance.
The
show open with an overture and the sound of a helicopter as we are introduced
to the Engineer and his bar brothel as the Americans are about to cut and run.
Kim aged 17 years is the latest recruit from the country, as her parent died
under the bombing and she fled to the city in search of means of survival with
prostitution the only source available. The creators of the show avoided the
problem of Madam Butterfly who is underage as 17 years’ old’s remain in a
number of USA States but the reality is that children have been forced into the
bar brothels sometimes sold by their parents as the only means of their
survival or to get sufficiently ahead to break from their cycle of survival
poverty. In every town where there is some form of military, or naval base, and
from the last century the airbase, or
places sympathetic to the need for fighting men to have relax and recreation
breaks when they are at war or far from home, the problem has existed and early
on in my work in child care, I was allocated a mother with three children, all
by different USA service men, from an airbase in the recent constituency of
former Prime Minister David Cameron and where the first was the product of a
visit to the base dance when she was only 15.
Every
night at the bar run by the Engineer, he appoints one of the girls Miss Saigon
the premium lady of the night, and when one become available, he auctions a
young virgin, the fresh meat to quote the words of the lyricist by Alain Boubil
who also created the original French Lyrics, along with Claude-Michael
Schonberg who created the music and the story. They created their first work
together in 1973, Les Revolution Francaise and it was in 1978 that they
commenced work on what has become their more famous creation, Les Miserables
which opened in Paris in 1980. but it
was when the decision was taken to translate the Lyrics into English and for
productions to commence in London and New York that through Cameron Mackintosh
their work received international recognition. Cameron Mackintosh started
theatre life as a stagehand and he is also responsible for to other worldwide
ongoing shows, The Phantom of the Opera and Cats. It is also notable that
Cameron has donated part of the proceeds of Miss Saigon to a Foundation in
support of refugees. One of the
highlights of the anniversary after show was the arrival of Alain, Claude and
Cameron in the American Dream Car as the number was performed by Jonathan Pryce
with Jon Jon Briones.
Miss
Saigon first opened in 1989 in London and then in 1991 in New York, revived in
London in 2014 and opens again in New York next year, It opened in Tokyo 1992
followed Toronto 1993, Germany Stuttgart, not Berlin and Hungary 1994, Holland and Austraila1996,
and then New Zealand and Sweden with Estonia in 2002, Denmark 2004/2005 and
Finland, then Korea 2004 and most interesting perhaps of all Bangkok in Thailand
in 2012, also Austria, Finland and the Philippines
and revivals in Japan in 2004 and again
2008-2009 and 2012, 1914 and 2016 in South Korea, in Canada and Holland. A
production has also toured in the UK. The number of productions is mentioned
because changes have been made over the years to take account of changing times,
the different countries and their varied audience.
The
storyline is established with the arrival of young single USA service men into
the bar with John now
played by a Black actor arranging to buy Kim ( paraded as a Virgin)
for his troubled friend Chris and where the presence of Kim is seen as a
threat by the experienced Gigi who portrays a young woman still dreaming of
finding an American who will sweep her off to the USA and where she and Kim
sing the first of the haunting songs in the show, “The Movie in my Mind” and
this is soon followed by “the Dance”
with its haunting saxophone and in which the Engineer arranges for the Kim
and Chris who are genuinely attracted to each other to go to her room away from the bar.
It
is then the number “Why, God” which elevates the work away from a simple sexual
exploitation story to the perspective of the USA servicemen in a strange
country with a challenging culture and which in my view makes it more
significant than Madam Butterfly where Pinkterton always comes across as
fitting in only for the purpose of having a young wife and without questioning
his role. The difference is reinforced
when Kim gives an account of what happened to her family and how she is in her
present situation “Sun and Moon” and Chris wants the relationship to become serious
entering into a marriage ceremony according to local tradition and custom,
having in effect purchased Kim from the Engineer who wants a Visa to get to the
USA as he realizes the USA’s role in the country is ending. This is reinforced
by John in a phone call who declares that the situation is falling apart and
the USA is abandoning the people as it did in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya
subsequently, along with the UK and other interventionist countries, unwilling
to devote the resources to establish effective and lasting governments before departure.
This
leads to another pivotal moment when the young man, Thuy, betrothed by their
parents when adolescents aged thirteen arrives and is stunned to find what has
happened. Kim’s rebuke that he changed sides leaving her during the week her
parents were killed justifies her new circumstances but those able to take a
more detached view of events will have sympathy for the young man brought up in
one tradition and coming to recognise that the insurgent army represented the
way forward for the majority of people after decades of colonial exploitation
by the French and then the USA Americans. His sense of betrayal is matched by
the lovers forced to separate in the haunting “Last Night of the World”.
There
is then the powerful statement of the success of Ho chi minh, the leader of the
revolution with “the Morning of the Dragon” in which we learn that the
Vietnamese young nan Thuy has become a commander with authority and demands
that the Engineer locates Kim if he wants to retain his freedom. The
juxtaposition between the realities of geo politics and the complex emotional
relationships between individuals of different cultures is then powerfully
portrayed by “I still believe” in which Kim and the present USA wife of Chris
unite in their respective love and appreciation of his and their situation.
The
intensity of the story is further heightened when Kim and the Engineer is
located and Thuy attempts to use his new power to force marriage or she to risk
death by his men. Kim defends her situation by introducing her son by Chris
which infuriates Thuy more and he issues the ultimatum of survival through
without the child, a symbol of his enemy. In desperation she kills Thuy using
the weapon Chris had given her for protection when he returned the base in the
attempt to secure passage for his bride. Kim pleads with the Engineer help her
go to America which he ridicules before realizing that that her son is that of
Chris and their entry ticket if he poses as her brother “Let me see his Western
nose.” In the new production it is possible to project film of the boatpeople
crossing between Vietnam and Thailand, not lost on the Cineworld audience now
familiar with the attempts of the Syrians and others to reach mainland Europe.
Before the final chorus of the Exodus at the closure of the first act Kim warns
of want is to come, “I’d give my life for you.”
Before
writing of the Second Act It Is a good point to mention the substantial subsequent
change in USA Vietnam relations which occurred with President Clinton came into
office and that within a couple of years of the opening of the show in the USA there
was official recognition followed by trade agreements in 2000 and 2007 and over one and half
million Vietnamese Americans and a large cultural exchange of Vietnam student
studying in the USA and making their subsequent homes in the country.
The choice of the number which
opens the second Act of the musical is therefore of significance in
understanding that the work was always intended to be more than entertainment
or to duplicate the tragic sexual exploitation story of Madam Butterfly but of
all children like me caught in a no man’s land of no identity and no homeland.
The Bui Doi, the Dust of life
is our song and we stretch throughout human history to the children at Calais and
the children, the products of Isis and the woman and girls they are using. John
on returning home has achieved maturity as a human being and sanity as a former
soldier by representing an organization seeking to trace the fathers of the
children abandoned in Vietnam and across Asia and receives a report that Kim is
alive with a child, a bar girl in Bangkok and he contacts Chris with the news.
This throws Chris into turmoil
because he has not told his wife of the relationship and is someone who he
genuinely loves as she attempts to cope with the distance between them and his
nightmares, the consequence of his experience and relationship in Vietnam.
We learn that in Bangkok the
Engineer has become an employee, an on commission hustler with Kim the experienced
bar girl both surviving on dreams of getting to the USA, “What a waste” girls
available for the sexual tourist for only10 cents an hour, the offer of boys,
first girl free and himself for extra fee. Chris has arrived with his wife and
John goes in search of Kim and meets up with the Engineer “Chris is here”, but
John cannot bear to tell Kim the truth after witnessing her continuing devotion
and belief he has come for her and for his child. The bar owner arrives and
warns them both because of the child on the premises. John goes off to bring
Chris but the Engineer does not trust the situation fearing he will excluded
and persuades Kim to go to the hotel after finding out the address.
Thuy reappears as a ghost
cursing Kim that she will not fulfill her dream and next there is a return in
time to the fall of Saigon with Kim and Chris desperate to get to each other are
separated by the compound, just as the German people were by the Berlin Wall,
the Syrian and others by the European Wall, and Trump and the Republicans and their
proposed wall with Mexico and the last helicopter arrives to take the remaining
solders and Vietnamese away communicating the panic and despair of those left
behind as those more recently experienced
in Iraq, in Afghanistan and Libya and no
doubt in Syria once the threat to Europe and the USA has been contained.
Kim prepares to go to the
hotel, dressing as Chris knew her while singing a reprise of “the Sun and the
Moon.” At the hotel she encounters Kim’s wife quickly recognizes who Kim is
while Chris makes his way to the bar. Kim is shocked by the news that Chris has
married and feels betrayed because of the vows he made and demands that Chris
comes and tells her the truth. When Chris returns to the hotel there is another
number which again raises the work above others, including the Opera Madam
Butterfly, a she tells the reality of young men out of college being sent to
war in lands with different cultures for reasons they do not understand.
What is now to happen is
inevitable and the couple debate staying in Thailand to ensure the future of Kim
and his son, as at first his second wife cannot accept the possibility of
returning to the USA with the son. Before the end there is a spectacular
reminder of the American Dream with a chorus line of Marilyn Monroe blondes as the
dream car, and yes there is now an internet site selling the Cadillacs and the
Chevrolets called Dream Cars, comes on the stage which the Engineer humps at
one point, and ends with a lit Statue of Liberty young woman emerging from the
back seat.
To ensure she keeps the vow to
her son she dresses him as an American and kills herself thus ensuring Chris
and his wife takes her son but we the audience know this is likely to doom the
marriage and create lifelong problems for the child.
At the Cineworld West India
Dock there was a brief five-minute interval between the two Acts and then ten
before he 25th anniversary celebration when all the original London
cast comes on stage and with the principal singers giving encores with the
artists from the present production. It was a memorable and where it was
evident the audience had a similar reaction. I have ordered the official video
of the evening with copies for family members.
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