Miss Saigon and we the Pui Doi past and present

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 16^th 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 25^th 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.