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Miss Saigon

  • Theatre, Musicals
  • 3 out of 5 stars
  • Recommended
  1. © Matthew Murphy
    © Matthew Murphy

    Eva Noblezada (Kim) and Kwang-Ho Hong (Thuy)

  2. © Matthew Murphy
    © Matthew Murphy

    Eva Noblezada (Kim)

  3. © Matthew Murphy
    © Matthew Murphy

    Jon Jon Briones (The Engineer)

  4. © Michael Le Poer Trench
    © Michael Le Poer Trench
  5. © Matthew Murphy
    © Matthew Murphy

    Jon Jon Briones (The Engineer)

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Time Out says

3 out of 5 stars

BOOM. CRASH. RRRAAAARGH. Forget that puny new 'Godzilla' movie – here’s a real big beast of a blockbuster, the return of Cameron Mackintosh’s melodramatic monster hit ‘Miss Saigon’. If you want spectacle, lung-power, Big Emotions and a life size model helicopter, ‘Miss Saigon’ has all them in spades. If you want three dimensional characters or a sense of humour – well bad luck, ‘Miss Saigon’ takes a steaming dino-dump on the concepts of depth and light relief and trudges on. Oh, and of course  ‘Miss Saigon’ stomps on reviews: this new revival set a one-day West End sales record when it went on sale, and it’s just extended its booking period by six months.

Whether it’ll stick around for as long as Nick Hytner’s original production of Claude-Michel Schönberg and Alain Boublil’s Vietnam-set musical is another matter.

That production did, of course, have the great Jonathan Pryce in the role of sleazy Eurasian pimp The Engineer. For all the controversy around his yellow face casting, an actor of his calibre is clearly needed to impose some cohesion on the epic spectacle. That’s not to be unduly disrespectful to new Engineer Jon Jon Briones, who is the strongest thing about Laurence Connor’s revival - a ratty, sinewy survivor with a real air of danger to him. But he’s almost too earthy and not boomingly thespy enough, never really able to take the production by the scruff of the neck until his raucous tour de force final number ‘The American Dream’ (which he does absolutely nail).

Most disappointing are Eva Noblezada and Alistair Brammer as starcross’d lovers Kim and Chris, the virtuous Vietnamese virgin and the American GI who falls for her, before they’re cruelly ripped apart during the fall of Saigon. The roles are flat as pancakes – they’re not characters at all, just walking ciphers, defined solely by their tragedy – but Noblezada and Brammer’s blandly forceful pop voices ad nothing in the way of added depth or gravitas; they are subsumed by the spectacle.

But what spectacle! From the go-go bar at the start to the skeletal Statue of Liberty at the end, ‘Miss Saigon’ is a magnificent-looking production, with Bruno Poet’s lighting almost certainly the best I’ve ever seen. Everything takes place in sumptuous gloom, the streets of Saigon and Bangkok conjured by shadowy huts and suggestive blurs of neon, but the cast are picked out perfectly. And Schönberg’s score is warm, rich and beautifully orchestrated, with Boublil’s lyrics sensitive to all the characters’ suffering, if not a lot more.

So Mackintosh’s monster musical still impresses, but one wonders if even the Mack really knows how to control a show this big anymore. Lots of tragedy, but where’s the humanity?

Details

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Price:
£27.50-£67.50. Runs 2hrs 50mins
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