by Alain Boublil
Michel Schonberg, and Richard Maltby Jr.
Directed by Barry Ivan
A Dancap Production
at the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts
July 9-August 1, 2010

   There are two outstanding reasons to see this touring production of Miss Saigon: Ma-Anne Dioniso and Kevin Gray. Superbly conditioned to continue their long familiarity with their respective roles as Kim and The Engineer, these two performers give glowing accounts of their characters, with Dionisio floating like a silver moon across a cloud-scudded sky as her Kim moves from sexual debasement to soaring romanticism and then flaring heroism as a latter-day version of Madam Butterfly, and Gray pulling out the stops as the leering, rancid, opportunistic Franco-Vietnamese pimp who serves as character and chorus. As this trimmed-down version shows, Miss Saigon succeeds not for its spectacle or political weight but for its inheritances from old-style American musicals. All the tremendous old hype about its helicopter scene and Asian musical influences can be pushed aside to allow us to see its old-fashioned virtues. For one thing, the helicopter scene is a dud, with the hydraulic mechanism showing all too plainly, and there is nothing but a flurry of bodies and sounds. (A lesser dud, but a dud nonetheless, is the Ho Chi Minh parade and panoply of masked figures, tumblers, and ribbon dancers, in an epigonic bit of exoticism.) For another, as far as the politics of Vietnam are concerned, the libretto is too slender to saturate us with the vastly publicized accounts of cruelty, slaughter, and desolation, or with any cutting critique of a thoroughly contemptible American political and military adventure. The only palpable political force is in the tragedy of the mixed breed children abandoned by their American fathers, for these young ones are truly what the Vietnamese termed Bui Doi (Dust of Life), and the powerful number dedicated to them (in a rather sanctimonious, hymnal way), though bolstered by documentary video footage, seems to glorify the American conscience almost as evenly as it provokes pathos for the unfortunate, deeply humiliated children.

  The sets and décor are bamboo utilitarian, the lighting better, and the costumes serviceable. Barry Ivan’s choreography is inferior to his directing, so there is a virtue to balance a flaw. In fact, the virtue is larger than might be first suspected. Ivan sacrifices bombastic stage effects or eye-popping spectacle in favour of human intimacy, allowing us to feel the radiant love, anguish, and rage of Kim and Chris (her American G.I. who is a modern version of Puccini’s Pinkerton but with a real conscience). Unless articulated in a strongly defined context and with some sense of their linkage to solid musical theatre tradition, the music and lyrics in themselves would probably wilt. Apart from a few gamelan notes and vague, almost repressed concessions to Vietnamese melody, there is not much evidence of Asian influence or styles in the score—and certainly none in the lyrics—but what I once felt was a fatal flaw I now begin to recognize as an ironic virtue. Boublil, Schonberg, and Maltby tweak Rodgers and Hammerstein, and Kander and Ebb in a way that becomes moving. The lush love melodies, blooming after saxophone accents in Act 1, create dewy eyes in the audience, just the way the love songs in South Pacific do. The operatic passages of Kim as she sacrifices herself for the welfare of her young child have an incandescent purity and force. And the composers do not forget the subsidiary figures. Chris, his blonde American wife, and Thuy, his Vietnamese rival for the hand of Kim, are given shining solos that Aaron Ramey, Becca Ayers, and Devin Ilaw render with memorable effect. Though none of these is given enough acting scope to add to their lustrous vocals, it should be added that Ilaw’s Thuy turns his character’s aggression to formidable advantage in his singing, and Ramey’s buff Chris is more than the standard hunk, while Ayers, though waxen in her looks, shows some of the anguish of the perplexed and hurt wife. Even Joanne Javien’s Gigi scores impressively in the “Movie in My Mind” number with Dionisio’s Kim, while Josh Towers’ John is a weighty presence.  

   But almost everything comes back to the roles of Kim and The Engineer, and it is here that this production excels. Dionisio changes from a sweet but trammeled seventeen-year old girl forced into prostitution to a young woman of romantic yearning, and then to a courageous young mother and tragically desolate victim. She doesn’t merely sing the role; she inhabits it, but even in her singing alone, she is magnificent. Kevin Gray reprises his role as The Engineer with a fresh boldness and acuity that are stunning. If Kim hearkens us back to Puccini and Rodgers and Hammerstein, The Engineer revives memories of Kander and Ebb’s Emcee from Cabaret. He has a similar nastiness and disingenuousness, along with the amorality of a sewer rat, the vulgar flash of a pimp, the flutter and strut of a hustler, and the sleazy cunning of an opportunist without a soul. His anthem is “The American Dream,” and he delivers it with show-stopping malicious relish and razzle-dazzle. His and Dionisio’s performances give full value as musical entertainment, proving that, flaws and all, Miss Saigon has a stirring effect. It oversimplifies history, of course; it does not produce any high literature in its libretto; it develops its score eclectically; but it ultimately triumphs by reaching our hearts—reminding us of the awful, tragic price of Vietnam while glorifying some of the best parts of the human self.   

pic 1: Ma-Anne Dionisio as Kim

pic 2: Kevin Gray as The Engineer




Go Back to: Stage Reviews