Miss Saigon

Miss Saigon is based on Giacomo Puccini's opera Madam Butterfly, which similarly tells the tragic tale of a doomed romance involving an Asian woman abandoned by her American lover during the war. The setting of the plot is relocated to 1970s Saigon during the Vietnam War, and Madame Butterfly's story of marriage between an American lieutenant and a geisha is replaced by a romance between a U.S. GI and a South Vietnamese bargirl.

The musical's inspiration was reportedly a photograph, which Schönberg found inadvertently in a magazine. It showed a Vietnamese mother leaving her child at a departure gate at Tan Son Nhut Air Base to board an airplane headed for the United States where her father, an ex-GI, would be in a position to provide a much better life for the child. Schönberg considered this mother's actions for her child to be "The Ultimate Sacrifice," an idea central to the plot of Miss Saigon.

Highlights of the show include the evacuation of the last Americans in Saigon from the Embassy roof by helicopter while a crowd of abandoned Vietnamese screams in despair, the victory parade of the new communist régime and the frenzied night club scene at the time of defeat.

Characters
Kim

Gigi Van Tranh

Christopher Scott

Ellen Scott

The Engineer

Thuy

John Thomas

Cast
Rachelle Ann Go (Gigi)

Isay Alveraz (Gigi)

Lea Salonga (Kim)

Eva Noblezada (Kim)

Simon Bowman (Chris)

Alistair Brammer (Chris)

Claire Moore (Ellen)