Scale And Symbolism Of `Miss Saigon' Turn It Into A Powerful Play
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Theater review
"Miss Saigon," music by Claude-Michel Schonberg, lyrics by Alain Boublil and Richard Maltby Jr., through Dec. 26 at the Paramount Theatre; $16-$66; 206-292-2787. -------------------------------
The music is dreadful - like one, long, uninterrupted 2 1/2-hour torch song by Mariah Carey. The story is sappy, a mere cartoon, with characters so flat (except one) you could use them for tablecloths. And the unrelenting assault on the senses - from booming "surround-sound" to strobe lights to the infamous chopper landing on stage - is more like an NBA basketball game than musical theater.
Yet, "Miss Saigon," that nonpareil of mechanical spectacles, somehow packs a heck of a wallop, and the production that went up this past Thursday at the Paramount, true to the immaculate reputation of producer Cameron Mackintosh, runs as perfectly as the jewels of a Swiss watch.
With singing that ranges from merely good to excellent, spot-on acting by a multicultural cast that nails the emotional center of every scene, precision choreography (Bob Avian) and dynamic direction (Nicholas Hytner), "Miss Saigon" is a triumph in its genre.
A heart-tugging love story, this 10-year-old, $900 million-grossing soap opera, is based on the real-life drama of the "blue-eyes" (children left behind in Vietnam by American soldiers). It tells the tale of a naive and lonely American GI, Chris, who rescues an innocent local girl, Kim, from a life in the Saigon brothels, but, alas, cannot save her in the end.
But the emotional punch of "Miss Saigon" leaps from the deep symbolism of American failure, captured so long ago by Time magazine in the image of that helicopter fleeing from the American Embassy, as weeping Vietnamese were left behind.
The show's Brobdingnagian staging is one of its two main attractions, beginning with an elaborately decorated rice-paper curtain that at one point frames the entire stage. A gigantic statue of Ho Chi Minh rolls out behind precision-timed acrobats and dancers with M-16s and peasant hats. A gaudy red convertible descends from heaven in a smoky dream.
Scantily clad prostitutes do the bump and grind, clutching their crotches. The lights of Bangkok sex-shops transform the stage into a neon hell.
But Barnum and Bailey aside, the tale's other great interest is an insidiously attractive brothel owner called the Engineer, played to a T with a sneering, comic grin by Joseph Anthony Foronda. Sweaty and shameless, sleazy beyond measure in his purple sports jacket, the Engineer confides, "I speak Uncle Ho, but I think Uncle Sam," his cynical materialism fed back to us as the real "American dream" we tried to sell to Vietnam.
Of local interest, Greg Stone, a Seattle-area native, does a bang-up job with Chris, conveying his emotional turmoil with a clear, warm tenor and crisp lines. Mika Nishida, as Kim, moves expertly from demure naivete to outright fury, and Jacquelyn Piro, as Chris' American wife, Ellen, does a spectacular job with the demanding number, "Now That I've Seen Her," in which she must swiftly convey multiple emotions.
"Miss Saigon" is written in the seamless, pop-operatic style - no dialog, all singing - made fashionable by Andrew Lloyd Webber, a form that coerces us continuously, at a fever pitch. That, combined with trite lyrics and cheap, chromatic musical passages (though, granted, "Sun and Moon" is a compelling ballad) ultimately inhibits the possibility of feeling anything at all.
It is neither the music nor the words that drive this show, but, as its reputation would suggest, the power of its scale, its seamless production, and the symbolism that bubbles beneath.