Blockbuster `Miss' -- With Eye-Popping Effects, `Saigon' Brings Back The Paramount In Big Broadway Style

When the Paramount Theatre re-opens this week after a major overhaul, it's a tossup what the bigger attraction will be: the refurbished landmark showplace itself or the dramatic onstage landing of a military helicopter.

That visual coup de theatre is the most famous moment in the epic Broadway production of "Miss Saigon," which is essentially the Puccini opera "Madame Butterfly" transplanted to the twilight of the Vietnam War. The musical was created in 1989 by Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schonberg (the team that also brought audiences the hit musical "Les Miserables"), and was first presented on Broadway in 1991.

Through song and spectacle, "Miss Saigon" chronicles the brief, ultimately tragic love affair between a U.S. Marine stationed in Vietnam and a 17-year-old Saigon bar girl. And despite a mixed critical reception, it begins previews in Seattle Thursday, with an advance ticket sale worth $4.1 million.

The convergence of "Miss Saigon" and the Paramount reopening is no lucky accident or run-of-the-mill booking. It is, rather, a carefully wrought plan to hype the enormous private-public investment made in sprucing up the Paramount, a landmark venue now owned by Ida Cole. And it's the splashy kickoff of a second U.S. touring company of "Miss Saigon," which is already booked solid for the next two years.

Cameron Mackintosh, the mogul producer of "Miss Saigon," "Les Miz," "Phantom of the Opera" and so many other international

blockbuster shows, knows the publicity value and civic clout gained by unveiling his touring units in new or just-renovated venues. Other "Miss Saigon" companies recently inaugurated new theaters in Stuttgart, Germany, and Sydney, Australia.

"We're very happy to be in the Paramount," Mackintosh said from his office in London. "We were planning (on taking) the tour to Seattle before Ida pressed the button on her project, because `Phantom of the Opera' did so well out there. But when she presented this option of re-opening the theater, we jumped at it."

"Miss Saigon" is staged on a physical scale that would not have fit into the Paramount as it existed a year ago - or, for that matter, into any Seattle entertainment venue outside of the Kingdome.

With much input from Mackintosh's well-tooled, multinational organization, the Paramount's stagehouse was reconfigured and expanded specifically to meet the demands of this show. The supposition is that if the theater could accommodate "Miss Saigon," it could handle almost any mega-musical.

For if the storyline of "Miss Saigon" is basic, even simplistic, the theatrical trappings marshalled by original director Nicholas Hytner and his blue-ribbon design team are anything but.

Making room for a helicopter

This $12 million road edition of "Miss Saigon" travels with 26 moving vans of costumes, gear and scenery. It requires a theater with a large loading dock, and enough room to park the four-ton, hydraulic-powered helicopter - which makes its big cameo appearance in Act II.

John Napier's scenic design conjures up more than 15 different locales - including a tawdry Saigon nightclub, a Viet Cong rally, some Vietnamese slum dwellings and the roof of the American Embassy. It also employs an outsized prop Cadillac convertible, 19 enormous Venetian blinds, and an 18-foot, 500-pound, gold-painted statue of North Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh. That alone took two months to construct.

David Hersey's acclaimed illumination scheme requires 475 lighting instruments, plus eight fog and smoke machines stocked with 300 pounds of dry ice per show. Also essential was wiring for a state-of-the-art, computerized sound system to project the voices of the 44-member cast.

Amazingly, all this is a more compact setup than that used in the first U.S. "Saigon" tour, which premiered in Chicago in 1992 and is now in Los Angeles.

"That one is so big that there are many theaters it just can't play," Mackintosh notes. "It's taken us several years to work up a design that gives audiences the full show, but through automation and jimmying allows us to move in faster and do shorter runs."

At the Paramount, he says, "You'll get absolutely everything that the Broadway audience gets. The show will thrust out into the house, and the sense of perspective will be quite fantastic. I think people are going to be shocked to see something with such epic depth of field at the Paramount."

More show than substance

It is the nature of these monumental British musicals that the depth and breadth of the visuals often commands more attention than the story, characters or musical score.

Unlike "Phantom" and "Cats," "Miss Saigon" has not spun off any pop-chart hits. But the show's theme and casting have attracted considerable attention - not all of it positive. Some American critics accused Boublil and Schonberg, aided by American lyricist David Maltby Jr., of watering down and even trivializing the Vietnam War by presenting it in such broad, sentimental strokes.

Mackintosh says he's aware of the intense feelings Americans still harbor about the Vietnam conflict, but adds, "In England we really didn't think about it that way. This was just a love story set against a tumultuous background, though we worked hard to get the historical facts right."

His measure of the show's legitimacy has been its appeal to Americans who fought in Vietnam: "I'm happy to say that when vets began seeing `Saigon,' they got right into it. It's absolutely been embraced by them, and in places like Boston, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, we've had some vets come back again and again."

As for the famous flap over who should play the Engineer - a Eurasian pimp and hustler character, portrayed in the original 1989 London production by Jonathan Pryce, a British actor who is white - Mackintosh says that storm has blown over.

When a Broadway run of "Miss Saigon" was announced in 1990, the Actors Equity union tried to bar Pryce's U.S. appearance and force Mackintosh to instead hire an Asian-American actor.

The tense showdown ended with Equity backing off its demands, and Pryce winning a Tony in the role. But many Asian-American theater artists angrily protested the decision to go with Pryce, calling it racially insensitive and insulting.

Their loud objections might have had a residual effect, because later several Asian Americans were cast as the Engineer - on Broadway and on tour.

The Paramount version features Thom Sesma in the part. A classically trained actor, whose parentage is Japanese and Anglo-American, Sesma says he joined in the 1990 protest over Pryce's casting but quickly reversed his position.

"Ultimately, I felt that it was an issue of artistic freedom," he said. "A producer has to have the freedom to hire whom he wants. But the whole thing is old news now. Everyone has moved on."

It took Sesma three New York auditions to win his plum assignment. The other principals in this touring unit also underwent repeated scrutiny before being hired. The lovers at the heart of "Miss Saigon," Chris and Kim, will be portrayed here by actor-singer Matt Bogart and Deedee Lynn Magno, a young Filipina-American making her major stage debut. (In some performances, Cristina Paras will play Kim).

Filling other major roles are Anastasia Barzee as Chris' wife, Ellen, and C.C. Brown as Chris' GI buddy, John. Two local youngsters, Ciana Calos-Nakano of West Seattle and Annalise Wong of Redmond, will alternate as Kim's son, Tam.

Fred Hanson, who stage managed "Miss Saigon" on Broadway, guided the new company through a month of rehearsals in New York. He says his restaging of the musical on the Paramount stage is patterned after Hytner's original direction, "but it's closely tailored to the actors we're using here."

Hanson will continue to drop in on and brush up the production, as it moves on to Portland and other cities on an itinerary that's booked through 1996.

And Mackintosh, a famous quality-control freak, will fly in from London to check up on "Miss Saigon" during its Paramount previews. What he'll be looking for is both a high level of technical perfection and a strong emotional impact.

"I don't think great sets are a solution to anything, other than to highlight a lack of good writing," Mackintosh says, in response to the charge that his shows favor flash over substance. "When I take on a show I don't do it as an excuse to fly a helicopter onstage. It's the drama of a story that matters most to me. Everything else is secondary to that."