While watching "Miss Saigon," now playing at 5th Avenue Theatre, you can't help but think about the current conflict in Iraq. Only Broadway's 1991 pop-culture tearjerker unfolds during the Vietnam War, and its aftermath is a hi-tech spin on Puccini's poignant opera, "Madama Butterfly."
Beautifully directed by David Bennett, 5th Avenue's production eclipses the touring show that played Seattle in 1999. The new offering owes its power to several things: The rich, visual dynamics, including the strong set design by Michael Annania and dazzling lighting by Tom Sturge. The talented actor/singers. The terrific orchestra and its virtuoso Asian percussion. And the soaring ballads by Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schonberg.
"Miss Saigon," originally produced on Broadway by Cameron Macintosh, followed the spectacle-driven path of those techno-flashy blockbusters "The Phantom of the Opera" and another Boublil-and-Schonberg creation, "Les Misérables." Some musical theater fans felt "Miss Saigon" and its helicopter came up short. And this critic agreed. But after seeing 5th Avenue's production, I've had a change of heart. Maybe because I've grown older and more attentive. Maybe because "Les Miz" made one too many turns on its revolving Lazy Susan stage. Maybe, as a piece of art, "Miss Saigon" brings home the travesty and politics of war with heart-wrenching splendor.
You're familiar with its sudsy plot. Chris, an American G.I., meets and falls in love with Kim, a beautiful Vietnamese girl forced to seek work as a prostitute when her family's killed. The young Marine rescues her and promises he'll take her to America. On the day of the final evacuation of Saigon , the two young lovers are separated and he's forced to leave without her. He doesn't know Kim is pregnant. Back home, Chris marries, while in Saigon Kim clings to the fragile hope he will return. A few years later, after discovering he's fathered a child, he does - but with his wife, to look for his son and Kim. Their heartbreaking reunion sets a devastating scenario into motion.
5th Avenue is fortunate to have Emy Baysic playing Kim. Baysic, who also portrayed Kim on Broadway, is absolutely exquisite as she evolves from the innocent country girl forced to sell herself, into a young women in the throes of first love, into a devoted mother who willingly sacrifices her own life so that her child can escape the tragedy of his. Baysic's stunning soprano voice expresses both vulnerability and the strength of a fierce-hearted Madonna. She turns "I'd Give My Life for You" into a glorious anthem of motherly love and evokes tears with "I Still Believe."
Louis Hobson, a talented local performer, proves his big-city clout as her noble soldier lover. Hobson imbues his performance with pathos and a touch of helplessness. With his heroic tenor, he sings the big musical question, "Why God Why?" and shares passionate duets with Kim, including "The Last Night of the World," sung to the seductive wail of a sultry saxophone.
As the decadent Engineer, Raul Aranas, another veteran from Broadway's run of "Miss Saigon," plays a shrewd and sleazy lowlife who runs a ring of bar-girls-turned-prostitutes. His character a metaphor for the spoils of war, the dynamic - and occasionally comedic - Aranas tears up the stage with greedy bravado, as the Engineer explains his seedy ambitions in the show's satirical tour de force, "The American Dream." Dressed in flashy red and black, he's backed by a glitzy chorus line of white-and-sequin-clad Elvis impersonators and Marilyn Monroe copycats dolled up in breezy rip-offs of her white frock from "The Seven Year Itch."
Featured actors give notable musical performances. Kingsley Leggs offers a symbol of hope with his commanding portrayal of John, a veteran with a social conscience. As Chris' wife Ellen, Candice Donehoo adds bittersweet loveliness, and Brandon O'Neill captures the threatening persona of Thuy, Kim's spurned fiancé.
There are many daunting images in this production. Inside the sex clubs of Saigon, brassy, bold and barely clad young women strip and strut their wares in the world's oldest profession. Outside, the same group tenderly prepares one of their own for a ceremony of love. Inside their squalid rice-paper huts, the frightened people go hungry. Outside, Communist soldiers unfurl Ho Chi Minh pageantry, waving vibrant streamers and a red silk dragon while a menacing red sun sinks slowly below the horizon.
The musical's notorious helicopter scene has been scaled down to a sound bite of whirling blades followed by a token Huey appearance. Perhaps more haunting is the desperation of the Vietnamese people attempting to climb the barbed-wire fences to reach the copter. But Act Two's opener, "Bui-Doi" (unwanted mixed children), tugs hardest at the heartstrings with a film clip of orphans fathered by American soldiers during the Vietnam War. Rows and rows of tiny victims wait, housed in iron beds built like miniature prisons.
As the final curtain descends, the lingering question is not whether "Miss Saigon" is a good musical or even an outstanding one. It is both. But 40 years after the end of the Vietnam War and given the daily missives from Iraq, Americans are still asking why. That remains the real tragedy.
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