Direct from its smash London run, Cameron Mackintosh's stunning new production of Boublil and Schonberg's legendary musical Miss Saigon lands on Broadway in March, 2017, featuring its acclaimed stars Eva Noblezada and Jon Jon Briones.
Set in 1975 during the final days of the American occupation of Saigon, Miss Saigon is an epic love story about the relationship between an American GI and a young Vietnamese woman. Orphaned by war, 17-year-old Kim is forced to work as a bar girl in a sleazy Saigon nightclub, owned by a notorious wheeler-dealer known as "The Engineer." John, an American GI, buys his friend Chris the services of Kim for the night- a night that will change their lives forever.
Don't miss this "thrilling, soaring and spectacular" (The Times of London) musical when it returns to Broadway this spring for a limited engagement.
Call it the guilty pleasure of '80s nostalgia if you must, but revisiting the show at almost three decades' distance, I was unprepared to be so consistently entertained for the two-and-a-half-hour duration. Sure, it's a brash, broad-strokes saga with questionable racial and gender representation and a taste for salacious vulgarity. But although director Laurence Connor has adhered to the basic contours of the original, his grittier approach exposes teeth in the material that I don't recall previously being so sharp. That's most notable in the show's unflattering depiction of American foreign policy, viewed through the prism of a misguided war and the messy atonement efforts that followed.
But then the unrelieved hyper-emphasis of Laurence Connor's direction basically squashes whatever might be good in Miss Saigon. Certainly the rather delicate (if leather-lunged) performance of Eva Noblezada as Kim doesn't get far across the footlights; you can hardly find her half the time. Indeed, none of the signposts and pointers an audience might look to for advice about what's going on work properly: The sound is unspecific, the lighting is overbusy, and the set makes it seem as if everyone in the cast lives in everyone else's hovel. It is only in that Constructivist parade, and a few similar scenes, that the pressure is equalized between the overwrought style of the production and its overwrought content. But it's not a good sign when the most cogent parts of a musical about American perfidy are the ones that borrow a totalitarian aesthetic.
1989 | West End |
Original London Production West End |
1991 | Broadway |
Broadway Production Broadway |
2002 | US Tour |
Big League Productions US Tour |
2002 | Milburn, NJ (Regional) |
Paper Mill Production Milburn, NJ (Regional) |
2004 | UK Tour |
Touring Revival UK Tour |
2014 | West End |
West End Revival West End |
2017 | Broadway |
Broadway Revival Production Broadway |
2018 | US Tour |
US Tour US Tour |
Year | Ceremony | Category | Nominee |
---|---|---|---|
2017 | BroadwayWorld Awards | Best Featured Actress in a Musical | Rachelle Ann Go |
2017 | BroadwayWorld Awards | Best Revival of a Musical | Miss Saigon |
2017 | BroadwayWorld Awards | Broadway's Backbone Best Musical Ensemble | Miss Saigon |
2017 | Drama Desk Awards | Outstanding Actor in a Musical | Jon Jon Briones |
2017 | Drama League Awards | Distinguished Performance Award | Eva Noblezada |
2017 | Drama League Awards | Outstanding Revival of a Broadway or Off-Broadway Musical | Miss Saigon |
2017 | Outer Critics Circle Awards | Outstanding Revival of a Musical (Broadway or Off-Broadway) | Miss Saigon |
2017 | Theatre World Awards | Outstanding Broadway or Off-Broadway Debut Performance | Jon Jon Briones |
2017 | Theatre World Awards | Outstanding Broadway or Off-Broadway Debut Performance | Eva Noblezada |
2017 | Tony Awards | Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Musical | Eva Noblezada |
2017 | Tony Awards | Best Revival of a Musical | Miss Saigon |
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