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Opera Australia will bring its production of controversial musical Miss Saigon to Her Majesty’s Theatre in Melbourne in October, following the conclusion of the show’s Sydney’s season.
Set during the Vietnam War, Miss Saigon tells the tragic story of Vietnamese woman Kim and her relationship with an American soldier. The original by Claude-Michel Schonberg and Alain Boublil premiered in 1989, but it is the 2014 revival by Cameron Mackintosh that is hitting the Australian stage this year.
Kerrie Anne Greenland and Abigail Adriano play Ellen and Kim respectively in Miss Saigon.Credit: Simon Schluter
The recently announced cast is a strong showing of local talent, with the role of Kim played by 18-year-old Abigail Adriano, who has already built an impressive resume. She appeared on The Voice Kids aged nine, and took part in her first professional production at age 11 with a role in Tim Minchin’s Matilda the Musical.
Adriano first came across Miss Saigon when she was in her early teens when her sister played her a recording of the West End production with Lea Salonga in the role of Kim.
“Being Asian, more specifically being Filipina, it was so shocking how loved she was,” says Adriano. “I saw how much power she had in her character, and I think that’s how I fell in love with it.”
As reported by this masthead in January when a low-profile casting call was issued, Miss Saigon has attracted controversy for perpetuating stereotypes since the 1990s. Previous productions have been slammed for casting non-Asian actors, while the most recent criticisms have been directed at the way Vietnam and Vietnamese people are portrayed.
The cast of Miss Saigon performs during the 2017 Tony Awards at Radio City Music Hall in New York City.Credit: Theo Wargo/Getty Images for Tony Awards Productions) .
Adriano says she and the cast are aware of the criticisms of Miss Saigon. “But I think what we’ve celebrated together is how [many] amazing Asian and people of colour have emerged because of this show and the opportunities that it’s given to us. It’s not until shows like Miss Saigon come around … that we really have a platform to perform something so raw and real.”
The show also has resonance, she adds, for many non-performers. “As I speak to a lot of my family members, they love the show so much because it finally represents the struggle they went through when they came to Australia as refugees.”
Opera Australia chief executive Fiona Allan acknowledges the show remains a controversial programming choice, but says there are a number of compelling reasons why it is a good one.
Among them is the relationship with producer Cameron Mackintosh, whose The Phantom of the Opera is the highest selling show at the Arts Centre to date. “For a variety of reasons around timing, mainly, Miss Saigon was the next one that made sense to bring out of his repertoire of pieces.”
Allan also acknowledges that the opera that inspired Miss Saigon, Madam Butterfly – which the company recently staged – is also not without controversy, but setting the two shows alongside one another allows them to be compared and contrasted. She adds that this version of the show pointedly paints the main Western male character, Pinkerton, as a colonist. “He’s not a nice man … he’s an exploiter and user of people, and particularly women.”
Noting that some critics have argued Miss Saigon should be retired, Allan says this is a live question in opera, too.
“You look at the traditional operatic canon, and it doesn’t do women a lot of good,” she reflects. “But I don’t think you can simply cancel things or retire them because you don’t agree with them any more, or because they’re set in an historic context that isn’t congruent with today’s value set.
“You’ve got to learn how to look at them differently. I look at Miss Saigon, and I think it’s an historic piece. It’s a piece from the ’80s portraying a view of the Vietnam War that was prevalent then.”
It’s the conversations surrounding productions like this that provide an opportunity, she posits. “I think it’s the talking about it that challenges. I think it’s looking at and feeling the rub of it and thinking, ‘Wow, that’s so interesting because it is portraying the way we used to think about this. We don’t any more – let’s talk’.”
Nonetheless, she did have lingering concerns about the work – until she saw Adriano’s audition.
Her Kim, she says, “is the antithesis of any sort of stereotype that you’d see – you’ve got an intelligent, articulate, feisty, brave woman who is so far from being a pushover.”
Still, there’s one more point of controversy in OA’s choice: the only work it will stage in Melbourne in 2023 is a musical, not an opera.
Though that choice is largely a result of scheduling clashes and the unavailability of the State Theatre, Allan says it makes good business sense, too. “When we do musicals, it’s to make money,” she says, adding that money is used to subsidise the making of opera.
Nor is this new. “Opera companies have always done some sort of light repertoire – whether it was operetta or Gilbert and Sullivan or Rodgers and Hammerstein – and we’re just doing a contemporary version of that.”
There will be staged operas in Melbourne for the 2024 season, Allan promises. “But not in traditional venue settings.”
Miss Saigon is at Her Majesty’s from October 29 to December 3. Tickets on sale from June 6 at miss-saigon.com.au
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