Love and Misery in the Vietnam War (Better one than 3rd Edition)
Miss Saigon Commercial
Sun and Moon, Miss Saigon
If I tell the production history briefly, Claude Michel Schonberg, Sir Cameron Mackintosh, Alain Boubil composed, produced, and lyricized this musical and it became one of the Four Great Musicals of all time. Also, the famous Lea Salong took the leading role of Kim in the first 1990 production.
The story runs this way. A main character wanders in a crossroad in her life, whether to stay in communist Vietnam with her evil fiancé or move to a liberal democracy where she can live happily ever after with her other love. It is between the Vietcong or the American. Both men fight for her and the former dies. After that, the City of Saigon began to split, so the remaining GIs had to go back home and they cannot take all of Vietnamese with them including Kim, the main character. Kim waits for her love with her son, Tam. But shockingly, her American lover married another woman when he returned to the US without Kim. Kim had no choice but to commit suicide for Tam.
Vietnamese folk melodies make up the overture, finale, “Sun and Moon”, and “Dju Vay Vai” and western styles make up the rest of songs because the orchestra has both Western and Vietnamese folk instruments. How amazing it is that both can be magically synthesized and create great music with various themes! The various themes and expressions are based on the moods of curiosity, gloom, joy, love, evil, shock, desperation, and obsession.
Is this making you want to watch this production one day? It will be good to know the history of the Vietnam War and feel the pain of a nation and two star-crossed lovers.