A Friday Night In Hollywood With Miss Saigon

I have never thought of Los Angeles as a theatre town.  Most performances I have attended featured actors hoping that their stars would rise and actors who had some success and were doing a play between projects.  This is called stretching the acting chops, this theatre work; it is definitely not a money-making endeavor for Hollywood actors.  Whatever the circumstances, when attending a theatre performance in Los Angeles, I am always aware that the people on stage in front of me are acting.  And that often makes the experience unsatisfactory.

So I did not prepare myself to be enthralled by the touring production of Miss Saigon my wife and I recently attended at the Pantages Theatre to celebrate our 32^nd wedding anniversary.  I was transported, mesmerized, mind-blown.  I did not expect the opening number with the scantily-clad prostitutes nor did I anticipate the language—I am not a prude, but the last major musical I saw at the Pantages was The Lion King; enough said.  The lighting, the sets, the special effects, all exquisite and only added to the performances.

Emily Bautista’s Kim is a revelation.  She is in almost all the scenes in the first half of the show and much of the second half as well, and since the entire play is more of an opera with everything—plot points, dialogue, etc.—sung, I marveled at her ability to belt out the difficult score from nearly every position, including prone on her back and crouched cradling a child.  Red Concepcion as the Engineer is also impressive as a sort of ring master to the circus that was the final days of Saigon and the Vietnam War.

Of course, the piece de resistance is the landing of the helicopter on stage for the evacuation of the U.S. embassy, an image from history that most people of a certain age remember clearly.  The aircraft starts as a hologram from the back of the theatre, floats down over the audience’s heads with a thundering shudder and hiss of rotors to disappear at the back of the stage only to turn around and float back into view over the actors and chaotic scene.  At that point, it appeared to be a very real aircraft with spinning rotor and pilots in the cockpit.  It was nothing less than astounding.

The ending was a little predictable but moving.  The story of Amerasian children born of American G.I. fathers and Vietnamese mothers has always been part of the discussion of the Vietnam War.  Yet, the subject has not gotten the treatment that the war and all of its consequences has.  Certainly this aspect makes for a unique story for musical theatre.  Miss Saigon stands alone for this reason, and a revival was a welcomed return for a great show.

We exited the theatre to a wonderful balmy night in Hollywood.  The sidewalks overflowed with tourists, theatre-goers, and residents who occupy the surrounding mixed use buildings.  Hot dog and sausage vendors lined the streets and the smell of onions and grilling filled the air.

Theatre in Los Angeles does not really have its Times Square, mainly because the city has such a sprawl but the Pantages is the heart of the theatre scene in L.A., as I have written before.  In a town that puts everything into its film industry, good theatre does take place if one is willing to venture out and look for it.  That night, 32 years after our special day, we had an unforgettable experience on a beautiful night in Hollywood.