Miss Saigon never made it to Baltimore during its decade on Broadway because the production was too big to fit in the local theaters. But now a newer, smaller and, in most respects, improved version has arrived at the Lyric Opera House.
Theatergoers who thought this show was all about a helicopter may find the touring production disappointing. But theatergoers who favor musicals about human emotions over musicals about machinery may actually prefer this sleeker Saigon.
Created by the Les Miserables team of composer Claude-Michel Schonberg and lyricist Alain Boublil, working with American lyricist Richard Maltby Jr., Miss Saigon is a loose adaptation of the Madame Butterfly story, updated to the fall of Saigon in 1975. Even without an operatic precursor, it's a subject and setting with more than enough overwrought feelings to justify bombast.
But in director Mitchell Lem- sky's production, the human dimension prevails, thanks largely to a sensitive cast headed by strong-voiced leads who deliver empathetic portrayals. And perhaps because we now may be on the brink of war again, the theme of combat's toll on civilian women and children, as well as on soldiers, seems especially striking.
Lt. Pinkerton's counterpart in Miss Saigon is a sympathetically rendered Marine sergeant named Chris whose Cio Cio San is a 17-year-old Vietnamese girl named Kim. They fall in love on Kim's first night at the brothel where she has reluctantly found employment after seeing her parents burned to death.
From the start, the production establishes the difference between these young lovers and the tough, vulgar world around them. Thrown together by a well-meaning buddy, Alan Gillespie's Chris and Jennifer Hubilla's Kim initially look as shy and uncomfortable as a couple of kids at a high school dance. And their first duet, "Sun and Moon," is as sweet as the love notes those kids might have surreptitiously passed in class.
But Dreamland - as the brothel is called in one of the show's many heavy-handed references to the perversion of the American Dream - is far from high school. It's a tawdry, desperate establishment where fights break out between patrons, between the euphemistically dubbed "bar girls," and between the bar girls and their clientele. The hip-thrusting choreography created by Jodi Moccia in the opening number, "The Heat is on in Saigon," leaves no doubt that the passions that are slaked here have everything to do with appetite and nothing to do with love.
Presiding over this enterprise is a money-grubbing, manipulative bottom feeder who calls himself "The Engineer" and is played with rat-like resilience and an unctuous grin by Jon Jon Briones.
By nature, Briones' jaded Engineer and Hubilla's naive Kim couldn't be more dissimilar. But three years after Kim and Chris are rashly separated by the hasty evacuation of Saigon, The Engineer and Kim form a symbiotic relationship borne of their shared desire to get to America.
It is indicative of the attention paid to the characterizations in this production that we see, in little ways, the effect this odd relationship has on these two characters. Briones gives just a hint that The Engineer has a vestige of a heart, while Hubilla's Kim has learned enough of his wily ways to know how to get what she wants - although she's willing to pay a much greater price than he ever would.
The famed helicopter, of course, figures into the evacuation scene. On Broadway and in the larger touring venues, it landed on stage. At the Lyric, the effect is created with slick projections (designed by Sage Marie Carter on a set by Adrian Vaux) and sound effects (designed by Lucas J. Corrubia Jr.). These fill the bill quite handily as far as I'm concerned.
The only time I missed the over-the-top stagecraft was in The Engineer's crass final number, titled - here it comes again - "The American Dream." On Broadway this sarcastic showstopper featured the Engineer performing (in all senses of the word) atop a white Cadillac. Projections - including one of The Engineer's winking face on a $100 bill - simply don't have the same impact.
One final word about the use of projections. The second act opens with a number called "Bui-Doi," which translates "dust of life" and refers to the Amerasian orphans fathered by servicemen. Like its Broadway forebear, the road show includes slides of actual children. On Broadway, where showmanship ruled, the number always felt exploitative. In this more low-keyed touring version, heart takes precedence over hype, and the number has the touching effect it was probably intended to have. And that's an ideal example of the sense of proportion that distinguishes the production as a whole.
Theater
What: Miss Saigon
Where: Lyric Opera House, 140 W. Mount Royal Ave.
When: 8 p.m. Tuesdays-Saturdays, 7:30 p.m. Sundays, matinees at 2 p.m. Thursdays, Saturdays and Sundays. Through Jan. 5
Tickets: $26.50-$69
Call: 410-481-SEAT