Review: MISS SAIGON at Adelaide Festival Theatre, Adelaide Festival Centre

Reviewed by Barry Lenny, Friday 12th January 2024.

The first production for the New Year in the Festival Theatre is Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schönberg’s multi-award winning musical, Miss Saigon, with lyrics by Richard Maltby Jr. Inspired by Puccini’s opera, Madama Butterfly, it transports the story through time and place, from Japan in 1904, to 1975 and the war in Vietnam. This Cameron Mackintosh production has been around since 2014.

A 17-year-old Vietnamese woman, Kim, is an orphan, her parents having been killed in the war, and she has been forced to accept work as a bar girl and prostitute for an unpleasant man known as The Engineer. Before she starts working, she falls in love with Chris, an American GI sergeant, who is mutually attracted to her, and his friend from the American Embassy, John, comes to a financial arrangement with The Engineer for her to live with Chris.

The Engineer runs a rigged competition for one of the girls to become Miss Saigon, awarding the title to Gigi, who is given to John, but he rejects her plea to be taken to America to become his wife. The Engineer is angry because he hoped to arrange a visa to America for himself through Gigi.

When Saigon falls, Chris is ordered home. Kim has a visa to go with him, but they are separated, and Kim is prevented from going with him. She expects him to return for her, but it is not until three years later, when he visits Bangkok with his American wife, Ellen, that they meet again. Chris spent a year trying to find out what happened to Kim, before moving on with his life, but he still has nightmares about her.

John has become part of an organisation to care for bui-doi, translating as ‘dust of life’, a term given to the children of American soldiers and Vietnamese women. He tells Chris that he has located Kim in Bangkok, and that she has a son, Tam, fathered by Chris. To survive, Kim has been forced to become a prostitute in a club where The Engineer touts for business, enticing men to enter. She begs Chris and Ellen to take Tam to America with them, paying a terrible price to leave them no choice.

The work opens on a Friday night, in April 1975, where the bar girls are backstage at Dreamland, The Engineer’s sleazy club, preparing to perform for the customers; American Marines. Newcomer, Kim, is introduced to the other girls with whom she will be working. Among those in the club is Chris, soon to leave Vietnam for the US. He falls in love with Kim, but is aware that it is only temporary, as he later agonises in the song, Why God, Why? He sings, “Why God? Why today? I’m all through here, on my way. There’s nothing left here that I’ll miss. Why send me now a night like this? Why me? What’s your plan? I can’t help her. No one can.”

As Chris and Kim marry, Thuy arrives to claim Kim as his property, due to an arranged marriage by their parents, but Chris chases him off. Thuy later becomes an officer in the North Vietnamese army and, after the withdrawal of American troops, goes in search of Kim, aided by the Engineer who has spent those three years in a re-education camp. Kim goes on the run and is led to Bangkok by the Engineer, working in the club until the arrival of Chris.

Kim is played by Abigail Adriano, filling her wonderful performance with a vast range of emotions. As the protective mother, in You Will Not Touch Him, the loving mother in I’d Give My Life For You, and, at the ultimate sacrifice in Little God of My Heart, Adriano gives a multifaceted representation of her character.

Nigel Huckle plays Chris, presenting a disillusioned soldier, hating the war, and detached from life. Huckle creates a brooding character, then makes a complete change when Chris meets and falls for Kim. Later, he fills Chris with anguish at the evacuation and inability to locate her. A moving, tender moment is the love duet between Chris and Kim, Sun and Moon, juxtaposed against the growing chaos around them.

Seann Miley Moore plays The Engineer, dominating the stage with every appearance, devious, self-centered, wily, and unconcerned about the welfare or feelings of others. He makes The Engineer thoroughly reprehensible, and the audience loves him. He brought the house down with his extended production number, The American Dream.

Kerrie Anne Greenland, as Ellen, gives us an understanding, concerned, and supportive wife, while Lewis Francis, as John, shows his character’s growth, from the soldier, to the social worker, thoughtfully. Laurence Mossman’s Thuy is suitably single-minded in his determination to get his way, regardless of Kim’s disinterest. Kimberly Hodgson, as Gigi, received much applause for her rendition of The Movie in My Mind, one highlight in a production filled with highlights. Minor characters are all well-rounded, too.

The full cast numbers are all well-executed in both movement and harmony. When Saigon falls and Ho Chi Minh’s troops arrive, their militaristic dance routine is delivered with, well, impressive military precision. Direction, choreography, and music are all faultless. The sets and costumes are excellent, the technical side of the production runs like a Swiss watch, and the iconic arrival of the helicopter never fails to excite audiences.

The performance, of course, received a standing ovation and extended applause, and, no doubt, that will happen every night. If you don’t already have tickets, you’d better hurry.