Miss Saigon

When we were given this assignment I was excited that we had all these different plays at our disposal. As I searched for local plays I came across Miss Saigon at Cal State Fullerton. I've always heard about this specific play but I've never actually watched it and had the misconception that it focused around the main character being involved in a beauty pageant. Instead, I quickly realized that the main character (Kim) is a poor farm girl whose parents have just passed and is found by an engineer who owns his own bar and sells these girls as prostitutes. When Kim arrives and is sold to Chris, an American soldier, they end up falling in love and it becomes this idea of "love at first sight." It takes place from 1973 - 1975 in Saigon, Vietnam, Bangkok, Thailand, and Atlanta, Georgia during the Vietnam War.

When I first arrived at the Little Theatre at Cal State Fullerton I noticed the projection of a harbor scene on the background of the stage. This helped to set the scene of the musical so that the audience could really absorb the setting and the character's situation. In addition to this projection there was this elevated ramp that was utilized very well throughout the performance to give the idea of varying levels. The stage resembles a picture frame that gradually gets smaller and more focused as the audience looks in which means that it is not like the proscenium stage that we have in our theatre. Before the characters enter, the lighting is of yellows, oranges, grays, and dark purples to give this grim, grave mood demonstrating the character's position and an idea of how everything is occurring the in midst of war.

During the actual performance a portion of the stage revolves first to showcase all the girls at the bar then to be used for setting changes. They also use a scrim to act as a separation between the inside and outside of a building. Rather than using a solid wall, the scrim allows the audience to see what is occurring outside such as soldiers standing guard as well as the action indoors. Jacqueline Nguyen who plays Kim and Jesse Abeel who plays Chris both have such a strong voices that captivate the audience. Their acting also parallels their characters in the sense that they clearly portray the emotions that the characters feel from urgency to happiness. The use of sound effects such as gunshots and landing helicoptors also help to further set the scene. At the end of the performance when Kim commits suicide, it evokes this emotion of pity and sadness because it does not end with a happy ending for Kim because she gives up her son (the only thing she lives for) to Chris and Ellen so that he can have a better future.

One last thought on the musical is in terms of costuming. As I was watching the performance, I noticed that the character portraying Kim wore traditional Vietnamese clothing (ao dai); however, the other actors in the ensemble wore traditional Chinese clothing (Cheong Sam in Cantonese and Qipao in Mandarin). Because it is set in Saigon, this means that the performance is centralized around Vietnamese and not Chinese culture. As a result, this shows that those in charge of costuming really need to thoroughly research the clothing of the time period so that the characters and audience can fully attain the essence of the plot and setting. Overall, I really enjoyed the plot and many of the songs because everything just fit really well together. One of my favorite songs was Kim and Chris' wedding song which was sung in both English and Vietnamese. And not only were the main characters' vocals strong, but those of the ensemble were strong as well.