Sheffield Crucible – until Saturday 19 August 2023
5*****
This new production of Miss Saigon is definitely made in Sheffield. It has grit and determination and a core of the famous Sheffield steel.
Unusually I have to start this review with a mention to the technical side of the flawless production. The thrust stage is nothing more than a grey blank slate. But as the show runs through the stage and backdrop become awash with light and colour. Designer Ben Stones, Lighting Designer Jessica Hung Han Yun and Video and Animation Designer Andrzej Goulding, along with Direction by Robert Hastie and Anthony Lau have produced something huge but yet intimate and it’s truly amazing.
By special arrangement from Cameron Mackintosh and with music and lyrics by Claude-Michel Schönberg and Alain Boublil, Miss Saigon – a reworking of Puccini’s Madame Butterfly – started life at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane in 1989. Running for 10 years, it then had a reworking at the Prince Edward theatre in 2014.
Set against the backdrop of the Vietnamese War of the 1970’s; innocent country girl Kim (JESSICA LEE) escapes to Saigon from her village and planned arranged marriage to Thuy (ETHAN LE PHONG). Found by The Engineer (JOANNA AMPIL) she takes her to his seedy bar Dreamland which is populated by the American GI’s who use the girls who work at the bar. Sensing she can use her innocence and sell her virginity to the highest bidder, The Engineer does the mock “Miss Saigon” contest to show off her purity against the other working girls. Gigi (AYNRAND FERRER) wins the contest but not before a bidding war has started on Kim. GI John (SHANE O’RIORDAN) is the winning bidder and gives Kim to his friend Chris (CHRISTIAN MAYNARD) as a present to cheer him up. She willingly gives up her virginity and Kim and Chris fall in love.
Fortune however deals them a series of cruel blows and when Saigon falls to enemy forces, in the musical’s iconic moment Chris is airlifted to safety in a helicopter and the pregnant Kim must fend for herself. Three years have passed, Saigon is now Ho Chi Minh. Thuy is now a Commissar and sends the very down at heel Engineer to find Kim. Thuy wants his arranged marriage. The Engineer finds Kim surviving on the streets with her son Tam (ANAYA AWOKO-BENNETT, IKAYAN-RAY MULOMO, DEACON PINDER and HIRAK SINGLA sharing the role). Whilst The Engineer sees a mixed race child as her passport to America, Thuy see’s it as a betrayal and means to kill the child until Kim kills him, shooting him with Chris’s gun. Kim, Tam and The Engineer escape to Bangkok.
Back in the USA, Chris is married to Ellen (SHANAY HOLMES). The Vietnamese war and losing Kim broke him and he fell into a depression. Ellen helped pick up the pieces but he still suffers with nightmares and was still trying to find word of Kim. John, now working for a charity that helps with war orphans, gets word of Kim and her son Tam and tells Chris. John, Chris and Ellen go to Bangkok to find Kim and his son.
Jessica Lee exudes vulnerability and has an effortlessly beautiful singing voice, clear and sweet, Christian Maynard is a suitably simplistic Chris. Ellen is sensitively played by Shannay Holmes, helping to understand how conflicted a woman she is. Ethan Le Phong as Thuy, Kim’s intended husband, has a rich, powerful voice and brings an intense dignity to his efforts to win her back. But the star is Joanna Ampil who plays The Engineer. She is charming and yet conniving, seedy, funny, savage, ruthless and sleazy and commands even an empty stage; everything The Engineer should be. I loved the tiny but comedic part where she casts aside a red jacket – and her interpretation of American Dream is a joy, with a nod to Marilyn Monroe and Madonna’s Material Girl video
Miss Saigon, at almost 3 hours long, is packed full of songs. Based on an opera, it is nearly all sung through with very little dialogue. The live band conducted by Chris Poon played all the big songs like The Movie in my Mind, Why God Why, Sun and Moon and the Last Night of the World are sung in very quick succession. Bui Doi, as normal, had me in tears. The moment everyone waits for – the helicopter descending on to the stage, was impressive as it should be. Miss Saigon will always be a massive spectacle – a wave of raw emotion, gritty, violent and sexy. Suffocating but sincere the show reflects much more of the reality of war and Sheffield theatres have produced a masterpiece