Today I was given two ticket to the Broadway show Miss Saigon, it is playing in Seattle right now. When it comes to high falutin’ things like plays and musicals, I have no idea what to expect. I have never been to a play (except for grade school shows by my kids) and frankly, I’m not sure I would even enjoy something like this. My musical tastes are limited (if it don’t end in rock, fuhgetaboutit) and I can honestly say I have never listened to a Broadway show tune in my life. Is this something that an average middle aged person with limited musical tastes would enjoy? If I don’t go a local senior center would be happy to take the tickets off my hands. I’ll leave it up to you.
It’s an entertaining show. I saw it in Toronto in 1994 - the full version with the helicopter and everything. (The touring production you see might not have that.)
Some of the sets are quite striking, especially the Bangkok one with all of the fleshbot bar signs and exteriors.
A couple of the songs - “Why, God?” and “The Last Night of the World” are cringeworthy, especially the latter. However, some of the other songs more than make up for it. It was considered by many an edgy score when it premiered in 1989. Take note: it’s through-composed, meaning everything is sung.
You got free tickets. You’ll have fun.
Maybe. I can’t speak to the performance you’re about to see – I saw it on Broadway when it first opened – but Miss Saigon is a huge Spectacle-type musical. Everything about it is kind of huge. The numbers, the sets, and especially the melodrama. Its a little bit preachy in parts and a lot cynical in parts. It has some good songs, especially “The American Dream.”
Just to give you an idea of what I mean by Spectacle, on Broadway, the fall of Saigon was depicted as a two-sided set set on a turntable – Inside the Embassy and Outside the Embasy. The table roated showing “both sides” of the story for maximum pathos – the Vietnamese trying to get in, the American Soldiers trying to get out. There was a full-sized Huey on the stage, and a sound effect of a chopper taking off so realistic, the majority of the audience ducked.
It’s not “deep” at all, you won’t have a hard time following the story. It’s very mid-brow, and intentionally so. If you like this kind of movie (big action, thwarted love, etc.) you’ll probably like the musical.
Free tickets, huh? Go. Don’t think about it, don’t try to find out if you would like the songs or the story. Just go and do something you’ve never done before. The worst that could happen is that you’ll find out that you don’t enjoy musical theatre. And that still beats sitting at home watching TV.
I would definately go. I do not particularly like musicals, even though I have seen a large number of them. I have seen Miss Saigon 7 times. I will always see it if it is in town.
I think that it is a good show, but it is not really deep. It has an easy story to follow, and it does pretty well at following some of the history of the fall of Saigon. Many of the songs are fun, and it is an easy one to get into.
Some of the songs are a bit cheesy, but not too bad.
I think that if you have free tickets, it will give you a good opportunity to do something new and maybe you will turn out to like musicals.
“Miss Saigon”?
Huh… I’ve never seen it, but chances are that the main actress will be a HOT asian chick!
I’ll take the tickets if you don’t want them. 
Keep in mind, however, that they no longer produced the BIG version of this show. The version they perform now is a somewhat stripped back version created for a touring company (examples - no Ho Chi Minh statue, no real car, no real helicoptor - there is a movie screen that does reasonably well). I had heard it was stripped back when I saw it last and, having seen the full version, I was expecting the worst. It turned out not to be as stripped back as I expected, but wasn’t the gigantic spectacle it was before, either.
Just sayin’. Don’t go in expecting to see the helicoptor because they don’t do that anymore.
Go.
One of my favorite musicals. As mentioned, a few of the numbers are cheesy. And then there are a few numbers that are just downright kick-ass. The staging and produciton of it is the most impressive I’ve seen, though. The fall of Saigon scene is just friggin’ cool from beginning to end.
I tend to agree with Shabadu except for the seeing it 7 times bit. It’s an interesting resetting of the Madame Butterfly story, with an injection of some “topical” elements, but it’s not the greatest thing since instant Pho either.
I saw it on-Broadway towards the end of the run (free Tix, too!). I’m not particularly an MT fan but it had its moments – including a line in “American Dream”:
“Girls can buy tits by the pair! The American Dream!”
Well I went. My wife wasn’t feeling well so I took my 8 year old twin granddaughters. I would like to thank the 5th Avenue Theatre, when I inquired about buying one ticket for a granddaughter, they sold me a seat for half price, exchanged the free tickets so we had 3 seats together and upgraded the tickets from the 2nd balcony to the 17 row on the floor.
As for the show, this will probably be my only trip to a musical. Being a local production, not a traveling company, the balance between the music and singing was off most of the time. The orchestra would drown out the singing many times. And frankly, I just don’t care for that kind of music. It was visually stunning, they even had a full size prop helicopter. There were a few times the story tooks twists I didn’t understand. And my granddaughter were full of questions. A very nice lady explained the whole story to them at intermission. After the show we went to Hiram’s at the Ballard locks for dinner, it stopped raining long enough for a big rainbow to come out. Despite the free tickets, the afternoon still cost me over $100 but it was worth it. Samantha and Alicia can’t wait till they get to see a live show again.
Thanks for the recap. It’s not for everyone, and you gave it a fair shot. It’s so sweet you took your grandaughters! A friend of the family took me to my first musical about that age (it was “Big River,” a musical adaptation of Huckleberry Finn) and it sparked a lifelong interest in theater of all sorts.
Its too bad you couldn’t follow the story because of the singing/orchestra imbalance. I was at a “Broadway” level production recently (actually it was on London’s East End) that had the exact same problem and I was like “what’s happening? Wha…?” in several spots. Annoying.
I saw the actual Broadway show and it reminded me of a bad made-for-TV movie. I don’t know what all the fuss is about. So they had a helicopter – big deal!