Miss Saigon - the legend reborn
The Heat is On next month as Boublil and Schönberg’s legendary musical, Miss Saigon, arrives at Leeds Grand Theatre. The creative team tells us about how this epic love story has been reborn in a spectacular new production.
A new life
It’s over 35 years since the legendary musical Miss Saigon had its world premiere at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane in London’s West End. The Olivier and Tony Award-winning show has remained an enduring favourite with audiences ever since, seen by more than 38 million people worldwide. But this major new production touring the UK and Ireland marks an exciting, fresh chapter: it’s a brand-new invention of Miss Saigon, giving audiences a different experience of the timeless tale, and it is coming to British venues that it has never been able to visit before.
That combination proved an irresistible draw for the show’s original producer, Cameron Mackintosh, who has put together a new creative team with his fellow producer, Michael Harrison.
The company of Miss Saigon. Credit Danny Kaan.
The pair have joined forces with director Jean-Pierre van der Spuy, who previously directed Cameron’s production of Miss Saigon (originally directed by Laurence Connor) for the Australian Opera, to create a version of the musical that will be able to play different-sized theatres across the country, whilst still delivering the show’s epic drama and stirring passion.
“We are going to be able to take one of the greatest musicals ever written in the last 50 years to theatres that have never had the opportunity to see it, because the original conception of both previous productions I’ve done were for 2,000-seat theatres,” explains Mackintosh.
As well as demonstrating that Miss Saigon could work on a different scale, a recent production in Sheffield included some thoughtful revisions to the text – a constructive process that is continuing with this new production. “I knew the show needed a new life,” says Mackintosh, “so I was very happy when Rob Hastie, who was Artistic Director of Sheffield at the time, asked for some lyrical changes for his production, which we collaborated on and the changes worked very well.” He and van der Spuy have added several more for this production.
“For me, productions can never stay the same – they should always evolve,” notes Mackintosh. “All great work can be reinterpreted. They need to reflect the era they are being performed in.”
The show’s lighting designer, Bruno Poet, agrees, saying, “… we’re rediscovering a show we know and love.”
Poet is collaborating closely with the Tony Award-winning video designer, George Reeve, whose brilliant imagery plunges the audience back into the turbulent times of the 70s, often using documentary footage from the period so that a modern audience can better understand the horrors of what people in Saigon went through in order to survive such a terrible conflict. Sadly, many people still find themselves in similar jeopardy with so many contemporary wars being waged around the world today.
The company of Miss Saigon. Credit Danny Kaan.
A new approach
Julianne Pundan as Kim and Jack Kane as Chris in Miss Saigon. Danny Kaan.
It’s been a big opportunity for van der Spuy to put his spin on this iconic musical. He admits he’s often pondered what he might do with the show but has relished the opportunity of working with choreographers Chrissie Cartwright and Carrie-Anne Ingrouille to put his ideas into practice and create something different.
The result has been a huge success with both audiences and critics, who have loved the starker and more personal new approach. However, Harrison explains that this isn’t a completely radical, minimalist overhaul either: it is still an epic Miss Saigon. The core elements remain, principally the heart-wrenching story which sees 17-year-old local girl Kim fall in love with American GI Chris, only to be separated from him by the dramatic Fall of Saigon in 1975. Says Harrison: “There is not a bigger show opening on the road this autumn.”
Indeed, the tour boasts an unusually large company: a cast of 28 actors and 13 musicians, as well as a technical team of 52 to assemble, run and move this production around the country. As Harrison explains: “None of us want to do anything that doesn’t go out there and create an impact. Touring is an art form in itself. We want to do it to the highest level and be the best.” Mackintosh observes: “Claude-Michel Schönberg’s music has real muscle, which remains the beating heart of the musical – you would never want to diminish its soaring power and beauty.”
However, by making a purposeful shift from the operatic scale of the original Drury Lane production, the team has been able to home in on a key element of the work: the fact that it is rooted in real history.
Although Miss Saigon’s doomed romance plot loosely matches that of Puccini’s 1904 opera Madama Butterfly, the major inspiration for Schönberg was a photograph he spotted in a magazine. It showed a Vietnamese mother saying a tearful farewell to her young daughter at the airport: she was sending her to the United States with her GI father, giving her the chance of a better life.
That unshakable sense of authenticity is what continues to make the show so deeply resonant, says Mackintosh. “It’s about a mother’s self-sacrifice, which is far beyond anything else, and a love story of young people torn apart by war. In particular, it shows the incredible bravery of these women, doing whatever they need to do to survive and protect their families. People believe in the characters: that’s why it breaks their hearts.”
Julianne Pundan as Kim in Miss Saigon. Credit Danny Kaan
A grittier tone
Seann Miley Moore as The Engineer and Julianne Pundan as Kim with the company of Miss Saigon. Credit Danny Kaan.
The challenge with doing the show this time around “is to take audiences back to what it was really like in the 70s,” says Mackintosh. “I’ve always taken great pride in that every note, every word in this show is based on reality… If it doesn’t feel real, it betrays the memories of these truly courageous people.”
Poet characterises this new version as having “a grittier tone: it places a real emphasis on the raw human story. It’s got more of an edge. The last time I did Miss Saigon, it was more colourful. There are still amazing set-pieces, and of course, we deliver big moments like the helicopter leaving Saigon, but you’re also very aware of what’s lurking in the shadows.”
As part of their research, the design team referred to real photos of streets in Vietnam and Bangkok. Likewise, set and costume designer Andrew D. Edwards was interested in placing the action in the real location, “making sure you can feel the heat, that you can almost touch and smell and sense that country.”
Edwards is keen that his costumes feel period-appropriate, but without tripping up modern audiences. “The 70s is one of those costume eras where, if you get it wrong on stage, it looks really, really wrong!” He and the team are also sensitive to portraying and costuming the female characters in a way that is true to this world but “feels appropriate for this generation of audiences and for the actors on stage as well.”
Ace as Gigi and Seann Miley Moore as The Engineer and the company of Miss Saigon. Credit Danny Kaan.
A human focus
Miss Saigon, notes Mackintosh, was a pioneering West End musical: “It is without doubt the biggest musical ever to feature Asian talent on this scale and a rare one that dealt with contemporary true events rather than period fiction.” Since its premiere, it has enjoyed enormous continual success in Asian countries too – it’s regularly performed in Japan, Korea, the Philippines and Singapore. That is a testament to its authenticity, argues Mackintosh: “It is their story. They possess it. They don’t consider it just another famous musical.”
This new British tour features Filipino-Australian star Seann Miley Moore reprising the role of the Engineer (which they previously played in the Australian Opera production in 2023), plus the recent Brit School graduate Julianne Pundan making her professional debut as Kim, with 17-year-old Bea Ward playing the role at certain performances. Mackintosh says of the new cast: “It’s terribly exciting what they bring to it. When I first met Seann, we had a conversation about their point of view on the material and what it means to their generation.” Van der Spuy adds: “It’s a very visceral show. It’s important that the cast feel they own the piece. I can’t own a character like the Engineer or Kim: I don’t have the lived experience. Having the right actors who can tap into aspects of their culture and heritage makes this such a rewarding process – and in 2025, it feels like there’s an even greater opportunity to do that.”
Seann Miley Moore as The Engineer in Miss Saigon. Credit Danny Kaan.
Mackintosh reveals he didn’t plan to mount this tour exactly 50 years on from the end of the Vietnam War but it’s been fascinating to look back on a seminal moment of history through a 21st-century lens. Van der Spuy thinks the show might provide a way for audiences to emotionally deal with some of the horrors and conflicts of our modern world, since it focuses on “the human aspect. It’s not about politics or agendas – it’s about the people in this situation.” Poet adds: “The musical shows how humans can connect with each other in the most difficult circumstances, and behave in both vile ways and beautiful ways. That feels meaningful right now.” Mackintosh ends: “I hope audiences walk out of the theatre thinking they have seen a brilliant musical for the first time, something really special, that feels current and not a revival – a legend reborn.”
