"Saigon" actors learning from Vietnamese survivors

Like a number of spectacular musicals, "Miss Saigon" premiered in London, went through several modifications before it landed on Broadway, then changed again for a touring production. In the 1990s, the official road version of this Vietnam War variation on "Madame Butterfly" played twice at the Paramount.

Now the rights to the 1989 show are more widely available, and the 5th Avenue Musical Theatre Company, in cooperation with theaters in Texas, New Jersey and other states, is mounting a new production that promises to be more authentic than previous versions.

The director is David Bennett, who supervised the touring show in Hong Kong and Singapore, witnessing Asian reactions at sold-out performances of this pop-opera dramatization of the fall of Saigon. Bennett and the 5th Avenue's artistic director, David Armstrong, are expanding the orchestra pit to accommodate more Asian percussion instruments as well as Buddhist temple bells. No tape recordings or synthesizers will be used.

Most of the actors were not born when Saigon fell 30 years ago, so Bennett and Armstrong have brought in several local Vietnamese survivors to share their stories with the cast members. Their often harrowing tales of escaping the communists and living as "boat people" reflect Bennett's belief that the show never pushes too far.

"If it seems too dramatic," he said, "it's not." One of the Vietnamese consultants talked about hiding out and living for five years on one daily bowl of rice and roots. Another remembered the complications of leaving Vietnam just days before the evacuation began.

While "Miss Saigon" is best-known for its dramatic staging of a helicopter landing, Bennett and Armstrong hope to get beyond special effects. They believe that if the relationships aren't convincing, no amount of pageantry will make up for it. Earlier productions were criticized for allowing the chopper to overshadow the story.

Theater preview

"Miss Saigon," musical by Alain Boublil, Richard Maltby Jr. and Claude-Michel Schönberg, previews Sunday through Wednesday, opens Thursday, runs through April 30, 5th Avenue Theatre, 1308 Fifth Ave., Seattle; $18-$70 (206-292-ARTS or www.ticketmaster.com).

Louis Hobson, a 5th Avenue regular (Brad in "Rocky Horror," Claude in "Hair"), will play the American soldier, Chris, who falls for the Vietnamese girl Kim (new-to-Seattle Emy Baysic, who played the role on Broadway).

"Kim is the protagonist, and she has her own belief system," he said. "But there are six points of view, three American and three Vietnamese, all different. There are no heroes or villains. ... We follow her journey, though we [as an audience] also come with our own points of view."

Several Seattle actors play key roles, and they will go on to do the show when it moves to Fort Worth in early May.

"There's a heavy dose of Seattle because the talent is here," said Armstrong, who claims that New York, Chicago and Seattle are this country's three great theater towns. "That's the way it is with all our shows." Still, he does occasionally hire out-of-towners like Baysic who have become identified with a certain part.

"My first instinct is not to hire actors who have done it before, but with certain shows that's not the case," he said. "I'm always looking for people who have a new approach to the material, who are not singing along with an old tape, and Emy so wants to make it fresh."

The showstoppers from the original show ("I Still Believe," "Sun and Moon," "The American Dream," "Why God Why?") were created by the same team (lyricists Alain Boublil and Richard Maltby Jr., composer Claude-Michel Schönberg) that did "Les Misérables" and the short-lived "Martin Guerre." They were inspired by a photo of a Vietnamese woman trying to give up her child to the Americans leaving Saigon.

"They were so taken with that photo, so moved by it," said Armstrong.

Although Bennett has been with the show in various incarnations for years, he hates to pick a single favorite moment. But he will say that the ending always gets to him, as well as Kim's pre-evacuation nightmare, which is made of "seven little scenes, very theatrical. It's just a very well-written scene and song."

The 30th anniversary of Saigon's fall (April 30) takes place during the run of the show. Armstrong said he wasn't thinking about that when he started to consider reviving "Miss Saigon" two years ago. But he expects the media to be saturated with anniversary stories later this month.

John Hartl: johnhartl@yahoo.com.

Information in this article, originally published April 8, 2005, was corrected April 19, 2005. A previous version of this story incorrectly reported the date of the fall of Saigon. The correct date is April 30, 1975.