Miss Saigon

Did I tell you we went to see Miss Saigon? This was planned last year. Tickets were bought somewhere before Christmas. Guess there were some Kiasu among us. My good wife included me in without asking me if I was interested. It was hard to say “No” once she agreed with her friends and they bought the tickets. It was not cheap, A$100 per person.

Last Sunday was the show and we initially wanted to take the Choo Choo train into the city since the fare was $2.50 return on Sundays. But the sky opened up in the morning and the afternoon was gloomy, we decided to drive into the city.

The city traffic was choke with cars at 4pm. It was very unusual and we were so afraid we will be late for the show. Rather than looking for a public car park, we park our car in a private car park for $10 and arrive at the Majesty's Theatre with about 5 minutes to spare. Not bad, eh!

“Miss Saigon is a modern adaptation of Giacomo Puccini's opera Madame Butterfly, and similarly tells the tragic tale of a doomed romance involving an Asian woman abandoned by her Caucasian lover. The setting of the plot is relocated to the 1970's Saigon during the Vietnam War, and Madame Butterfly's American Lieutenant and Japanese geisha coupling is replaced by a romance between an American GI and a Vietnamese bar girl.

The show's inspiration was a photograph, inadvertently found by Schönberg in a magazine. The photo showed a Vietnamese mother leaving her child at a departure gate at Tan Son Nhat Airport to board a plane headed for the United States of America where her father, an ex-GI, would be in a position to provide a much better life for the child. Schönberg considered this mother's actions for her child to be "The Ultimate Sacrifice," an idea central to the plot of Miss Saigon.^”

The story line was so predictable. Musically I did not enjoy the music and song; it was hard to describe it. It was just I could not walk away with a tune lingering in my head like other musical from Cats, Phantom of the Opera or Fiddler on the roof. Other then that is was just OK to me. I guess I am hard to please and I do not like sad endings. Ha, ha, ha. Sob, Sob Sob.

The show lasted about 2½ hours with a 15 minutes break. By the time we got home it was 8.30pm. A quick dinner and off to bed.