Arts Review: Miss Saigon at Festival Theatre is sensational

Adelaide’s much-anticipated first musical of the year Miss Saigon lives up to the hype. Here’s what our reviewer is saying.

Miss Saigon. Picture: Supplied

Miss Saigon

Festival Theatre

January 5

Take the music theatre partnership of Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schonberg and add the fairy dust that Cameron Macintosh seems to have in limitless quantities, and voila! You have a triumph. The first English production of the mega-hit Les Miserables was still running when Miss Saigon opened in 1989. Forty million or so people later, it returns to Adelaide.

Miss Saigon is playing at the Festival Theatre until January 28. Picture: Supplied

The story is Madame Butterfly – an encounter between a soldier posted to the East and a local girl, love, and a child … then separation and a seemingly eternal wait for his return. Puccini set it in 19th century Japan. Here we have a GI in Vietnam in the terrible days before the fall of Saigon in 1975. If the lovers are star-crossed, not so the scheming, immoral fixer who hovers over it all, alert to any opportunity to make a dollar, and at any cost.

Miss Saigon stars Abigail Adriano and Nigel Huckle. Picture: Wayne Taylor

In this revival, there’s simply nothing not to like. The production is sensational, sets and costumes of almost unparalleled excellence, down to the smallest detail. Sound and lighting, too – the famed helicopter rescue, in particular, is wildly exciting.

And the voices! Well, more to the point, “that voice”. Coming from nowhere, and absolutely smashing the lead role of Kim, is Abigail Adriano. Just 19 years of age, she makes this intensely challenging role her own, down to the very core.

Miss Saigon star Abigail Adriano. Picture: Supplied

A voice, and a performance like this demands phenomenal co-stars, and as her lover Chris, Nigel Huckle is pitch perfect, with a heft to his voice that complements Adriano’s impressive classical/contemporary crossover style.

And as the Engineer, well, Seann Miley Moore is amazing. The role is intensely demanding for its frequent twists and turns, one moment a tyrannical club owner, the next a sleazy pimp, all with a gender-fluidity that adds an extra layer of complexity.

Miss Saigon’s Seann Miley Moore. Picture: Wayne Taylor

The enormous company, 40-or more strong, is drilled to perfection. Many are superb soloists in their own right, with national and international reputations. And the orchestra under Geoffrey Castles is on fire. It’s a cracker of a production.

– Peter Burdon

Miss Saigon runs until January 28. Book here