Miss Saigon? I Certainly Do

The good folks over at MusicalTalk have been talking about an upcoming celebration of the orchestrator William David Brohn. Brohn has been the orchestrator of many musicals including Miss Saigon. Just listen to the start of that musical's overture and you can appreciate his skill. (The complete recording is available on Spotify). The sound of an approaching helicopter gives way to delicate chimes, interrupted by a punchy bit of brass and followed by an oriental flute. It perfectly sets the scene of war-torn Vietnam. And in only 24 bars or so. Quite amazing.

Anyway. this gives me a good excuse to jot down a few reflections on Miss Saigon, one of the first shows I remember seeing in the West End and one that got me hooked on musicals. The London production has closed now but is well worth remembering.

If you’ve heard anything about Miss Saigon it’s probably about The Helicopter. It’s part of a major set-piece in Act II that recreates the dramatic evacuation of the American embassy at the end of the Vietnam War, when burly marines sat astride the embassy wall, pulling up anyone in the crowd with a white face and leaving the locals to their fate. It remains a potent image of America’s involvement in Vietnam. In the stage musical, at the climax of the scene, a huge helicopter descends on the stage, fills with soldiers and flies off. This is not easy subject matter for a musical to cover and it’s easy to think that this impressive bit of staging is just a distraction. Fortunately the drama being played out on stage is equally as impressive as The Helicopter.

Chris, an American GI, wants to return to the US with his Vietnamese bride, Kim. Amidst the chaos of the evacuation they are ripped apart by a missed phone call. Their last words are hopelessly banal and confused:

JOHN: Please Kim, hear the phone
I can’t get there, please be home
KIM: Please Chris, no one sees
I am lost here, find me please

If this were an Italian opera, at this point, the action would come to a juddering halt and they’d be singing for half an hour about how they would meet in paradise or eternity or something. But the singing language of musicals tends to be punchier and closer to everyday speech. Their love ends, not with any high-minded ponderings, but with a broken phone conversation. Off-setting the messy break up of two people against the historic events happening all about them is an astute bit of drama.

The other thing you notice is the telephone. You won’t find telephones in any of the other West End mega musicals. Les Mis and Phantom of the Opera both emerge from the romantic mists of the 19th century. Cats is based on a collection of 1930s poems and set in some kind of fantastical rubbish tip. Only Miss Saigon is a modern, recognizable place with modern, recognizable people. It’s not just the props and the clothes that are modern, the score is too. Rock ‘n’ roll rhythms, wailing saxophones and contemporary slang:

The heat is on in Saigon
The girls are hotter than hell
One of these slits here
Will be Miss Saigon
God, the tension is high
Not to mention the smell
Is there a war going on?
Don’t ask – I ain’t gonna tell.

The brash slang gives way to oriental chants and songs about the Sun and Moon and the Gods of Fortune. It’s the old clash of cultures story; two lovers caught between East and West. And it’s not just the lovers. The clash is impressively written into the comic character, the Engineer, an unscrupulous shyster trying to hustle his way to America. The pentatonic (five-note) scale, commonly heard in Eastern music, is used to great effect in his jittery little number “If You Want to Die in Bed”, punctuated by syncopated brass. We not only see the clash onstage but, most importantly for a musical, hear it in the songs.

There’s still little critical love for these mega musicals. For most critics they’re simply too big, too commercial and too naff to be any good. When Miss Saigon opened in London the Olivier awards judges, in their wisdom, decided to hand that year’s Best Musical gong to the jolly jukebox musical Return to the Forbidden Planet. Now I still have a few quibbles with the through-sung format and, granted, some of the Miss Saigon lyrics are a bit syrupy but, really, what was up with those judges? In terms of sheer ambition the two shows are in different leagues. I can only imagine that the judges took one look at the huge moving sets and concluded that it must be no more than empty spectacle. Fortunately audiences around the world were more discerning and chose the difficult, contemporary drama over the fun but frivolous piece of nostalgia. That’s a theatrical lesson worth learning.