Miss Saigon: My Impressions
As I’m sure many of you know, Joyce and I are really into musicals (or more accurately, Joyce is really really into musicals, and I like musicals a bit less than opera… which happens to be a lot). However, the number of musicals that we’ve actually seen together (as opposed to listening to the recordings in my collection) is pitifully small.
Come to think of it, I think we’ve only seen one musical together (Fiddler on the Roof at Capital Theatre) before Miss Saigon.
Anyway, Joyce and I finally got to see Miss Saigon at Lyric Theatre last Friday. Many thanks to Grace and Chris for shouting us A-reserve seats. We had a pretty good view of the stage (albeit being off to the side), and the theatre itself was quite comfy and cosy.
[Rant: The only problem with where I sat was that I was just a couple of seats away from some uncouth, inconsiderate imbecile who thought that it would be in his best interest disrupt the performance by turning up forty minutes into the musical and then proceed to dig around loudly in a plastic bag of snacks and offering them to his friend who was sitting next to me.
Luckily, she refused or else I would have had no choice but to 'educate' him with some stares of disapproval... maybe even while shaking my head disdainfully at him...
Grr... there should be a rule that enforces the automatic ejection and subsequent banning of patrons who fail to observe signs like 'no food or drinks in the theatre' -- particularly those who do so and consume them loudly...]
So how was the musical? Well, overall I thought it was very well produced. The acting/singing lacked conviction at times, which was a bit of a downer, but I quite enjoyed all the eye-candy and lighting and props and how they all seemed to move seamlessly between scenes.
Now, I can’t really help but compare the production with my Original London Cast recording. I’ve listened to that on numerous occasions (and watched plenty of youtube snippets) so it’s somewhat ingrained in me, and hence I automatically notice the differences. Whether these differences are good or bad, well here are my impressions.
The Engineer
I think having a western-looking Filipino guy (Leo Tavarro Valdez) play the Engineer (as opposed to Jonathan Pryce, a Caucasian) seemed to work quite well. After all, the guy is meant to be Vietnamese-French, so it was somewhat fitting to have someone that looked the role. Joyce remarked that he’s more talk-y and less sing-y than Pryce, but I didn’t seem to have much of a problem with that. I reckon he played the role well.
Out of all of the characters in this production, I think he would be my favourite.
John
In this production, John was played by Juan Jackson — a classically trained tenor. His voice seemed much more tenore di forza compared to the original John who was played by Peter Polycarpou. As such, the tone of his singing was at times a bit too rich and heavy to be intelligible.
Chris
I quite liked the voice of Chris (played by David Harris) in this production. Maybe it was because he was quite similar to Simon Bowman, who was the Chris from the original London cast. That said, he seemed to be a bit frigid on stage. When with Kim, there just wasn’t that much passion in his acting. She’s meant to be married to him, and yet he seemed like he was not completely there… just somewhat distant.
Also, after he finds out that Kim is still alive after being married to Ellen, you can’t really detect his inner torment and struggle of being in a dilemma of loving with both of them.
Kim
My favourite (by far) character out of the original London cast, played by Lea Salonga (who also happens to be my favourite female non-classical artist). In case you didn’t know, she was also Eponine in the 1993 Broadway production of Les Misérables (and now also Fantine in this year’s Broadway production of Les Mis).
Anyway, I digress. It wouldn’t be fair to compare this production’s Kim (Jennifer Trijo, on the night I went) with Lea Salonga. I think the same comments that I made about Chris can be made here — her voice is nice, but acting is a bit inhibited. When the main couple just doesn’t exude chemistry on stage, one just feels a bit gypped.
One crucial scene (for me), is when John and Kim meet and sing “Please”. For those unfamiliar with the musical, this scene is just packed with emotion as John comes to inform Kim about Chris having moved on, now that three years have passed since their separation. However, Kim is still holding onto the hope that Chris is coming back for her. When told that Chris is actually here with John, Kim is ecstatic and tells Tam (her son) that his father is here. They then launch into this duet:
| KIM | JOHN | |
| Oh Tam! He’s here! He is here, he’s so near We might breathe the Same air tonight! Your father’s here! |
||
| Oh Tam it’s true! My dream was right! You’ll see him soon! |
I can’t tell her like this I should not be the one Chris must come see his son |
|
| Please Don’t you see we’ve been Watched over? As we crossed The wildest seas? Even god wants us together Can I end this journey Please? |
They don’t say In the files There’s a woman in love Here What sustained her for miles Chris still knows nothing of Can I end this journey Please? |
Unfortunately, I couldn’t feel the exhilaration of Kim finding out that she will be reunited to Chris after three years of hanging on to a glimmer of hope — neither in her voice nor her acting. Also disappointing was that John was probably concentrating too much on the song and I just couldn’t sense his distress at not wanting to devastate Kim by telling her about what really happened with Chris.
Overall
Despite the minor quibbles mentioned above, I thoroughly enjoyed this production. There were even a few scenes where tears were welling up in my eyes (that had to be suppressed by male ego). These included the Bui Doi scene, where they projected a video clip of the camp of children left behind by the US Marines. The following Youtube clip (volume is a bit soft, you may want to turn it up a bit) is sorta what it was like…
The other tear-jerker scene for me was when both Kim and Ellen were singing “I Still Believe”. The following lyrics speak more powerfully than what I can describe…
| KIM | ELLEN | |
| For still I still believe As long as I Can keep believing I’ll live |
I will hold you all night, I will make it all right You are safe with me And I wish you could tell what you don’t Want to tell What your hell must be |
|
| I’ll live You will return And I know why I’m yours Until we die |
You can sleep now You can cry now I’m your wife now For life Until we die |
So there you have it… my impressions of our night with Miss Saigon. Stay tuned for Joyce’s thoughts on the production.
Thanks Keith for your comments! I had been looking forward to seeing this production for some time now and was excited to be there. Some highlights for me were:
The set
Something I really enjoy seeing in musicals is the effort that is put into creating the set and having it move and change very quickly between scenes. You can be in war torn Saigon in one moment, and then suddently flashing neon lights of Bangkok come down onto the stage to form the next scene.
A scene I particularly liked was where the GIs are leaving Vietnam and the Vietnamese people are being left behind, the audience is able to see things from the GI’s perspective inside the embassy, and then the fence changes so that now the perspective is from the angle of Kim and the other Vietnamese outside the embassy. This change happens several times and is done pretty smoothly. Then, to top it all off, this was actually done as a ‘flashback’ and so there is all this raw emotion and despair on stage and suddenly, you are back to Kim three years later sitting in her room quietly sobbing.
The props
I enjoy seeing different types of props on stage, especially the big ones that seem to appear from nowhere, like that big American car. The only downer was that there was no helicopter like in the older productions. But they still seemed to achieve a similar effect using the screen and having guys just jump ‘through the door’.
The chorus
I really liked the Asian guys who played the role of random Viet guys in the background. It was funny seeing them do really Asian things, like squat, eat out of a takeaway box while sitting around, randomly trying to get people to buy drinks, and trying to sell stuff without much success. It was so Asian! - and to be able to say that meant that they captured that Asianness well. It’s also fun to track certain actors as they change costumes and take on other roles, like dreamland prostitutes who become Viet cong soldiers, who then become poor Vietnamese villagers and then finally cute American showgirls donning blonde wigs.
Another cool thing to watch is child actors. Even though the child actor we saw that evening didn’t have to do much (he just stood there most of the time, and when called, he ran towards the person with outstretched arms). Also interesting is that several children play the part of Tam and most of them are girls, whereas Tam is supposed to be a boy. I couldn’t really tell. I think it was a boy….?
So, like any musical, it had its particular musical-type things within it. The most emotional parts of the story were when both women express their love for the same man. It’s so sad…very heartbreaking.
Now for some lowlights…
The acting
I thought the acting was sometimes a bit artificial, like it was just being ‘put on’ for the sake of it. It didn’t seem to arise out of any inner emotion and happened so quickly that I didn’t have time to feel the gravity of what they were feeling. It was frustrating to watch especially in the love sequences. Maybe having watched more opera in the last 2 years and seeing actors stand there and sing the same phrase about 10 times with different facets of the same emotion has made me more particular about facial expressions.
Sound
This is more of a personal taste thing. I guess having not watched a musical in a while and instead watching symphonies and operas over the past 2 years, it felt strange when I heard all the sounds of the orchestra and the stage that night coming out of an amp to the left of me, rather than coming out from the front of the stage.
Well, that’s all for now. I may have some other comments later