Miss Saigon, the stage musical, was in Australia years ago, I don’t know how many. I remember wanting to go, but it never went to Melbourne. I seem to recall the reason being that there wasn’t a stage large enough in Melbourne for a helicopter. So when I heard that the musical was being performed in Melbourne several months ago, I checked whether it was coming to Sydney and it was! I bought two tickets, one for me and one for a rather reluctant (but willing to give it a go) Andrew.

We saw the show last night, and it was brilliant! The person who wrote the music also wrote Les Miserables, and there were certainly similarities at times (though I knew this already, as I bought the CDs years ago). I love the songs in Les Miserables more though. From the CDs, I wasn’t 100% clear on the story line, though I knew generally what happened. It is a story of a Vietnamese girl (Kim) who’s family are killed and she goes to Saigon where she’s picked up by a pimp (the Engineer) and she has to work for him. Her first night finds her with an American soldier named Chris. He feels a great need to help her, and she falls in love with him. They go through a ceremony, like a wedding, and they manage to live together for 2 weeks. Chris has arranged to take her back to America when he leaves, but the Americans’ leaving is chaotic and he can’t get to her and she can’t get to him. For 3 years she keeps her son a secret from as many people as possible, being a ‘half breed’ that people find repulsive. Kim has an ex fiance (they had been promised when she was 13, he had changed sides and I think she blamed him to a certain extent for the death of her family, and she told him she was married when he tried to take her home 3 years earlier) who has found her in the hopes of convincing her to go home with him. But Kim tells him about her son, he tries to kill the boy, and in order to protect him she kills her ex. Because he is high up in the army, she runs away to hide from those searching for her. She goes looking for the Engineer, who sees the boy as his passport to America, a place he is longing to get to. So together they go to Bangkok where he pretends to be Kim’s brother, and they apply for a VISA to America. John, who is Chris’ friend and who bought Kim for him that night in Saigon, has become active in a society who tries to protect the ‘half breeds’, or Boi Doi. The children of American soldiers. He has seen a camp full of kids who’s “crime was being born” and tries to get money to help these kids who, he says, are the responsibility of Americans. He finds out about Kim’s application to go to America, and tells Chris, who is now married to Ellen. They decide to go to Bangkok to see Kim and her son and work out how they are going to help. Kim is excited to hear that Chris is in Bangkok, and she rushes to his hotel to see him. He has gone looking for her, and so she meets his wife. Kim is shocked to hear that Chris has another wife, and yells that he must go see her that evening and tell her to her face, because she would not believe that he would marry someone else. Kim is desperate for her son to have a decent life, which she can’t provide in Vietnam, and so when Chris comes to meet his son she sees her only option is to kill herself. She shoots herself with a gun that Chris had given her 3 years earlier to protect herself.

It’s a sad story, and as with any sad stories I ended up crying a little. The part of the show where a helicopter was required, the helicopter was projected onto a screen, and they did a wonderful job of making it look like the troops were piling into it! The little boy who played Kim and Chris’ son was amazing. He was like a little rag doll and just stood where he was put. He got hugged and carried a lot, but there was lots of noise at times, and fighting, and I’m impressed that he didn’t get scared by it all. But I guess he’s been through lots of practices. At the end when the cast were doing their bows, he was so excited by all the clapping that he was jumping up and down. It was very cute.

I’m so glad I got to see the show this time round, and I think even Andrew enjoyed himself. I asked if he would recommend it to anyone, and he said he would, so that’s pretty good praise, I think!