Miss Saigon the Freefall Ride

Finally, I’ve experienced the third and final installment of the Big Three musicals last night, Miss Saigon. Our party included my wife Karen, Jimmy, Andrew, Carol, Howe, Jeffrey, and Grace. Here is the rankings from one of the foremost authority on musicals, the James Lee Musical Meter:

1. Les Miserables
2. Phantom Of The Opera
3. Miss Saigon

Miss Saigon is like Freefall from Magic Mountain amusement park–it takes you slowly up to the top, then drops you down. For most of the musical, it seemed like a flat movie that plays, and for a moment I pushed myself to keep my little yawn in.

It starts with some spicy scenes deemed inappropriate for children under 18, so I wouldn’t recommend bringing your little nephew to the show. No dozing off here. Then strangely you start watching some acrobatic men in disturbing masks and dragon chasing the tiger. Just when you thought it was over the top, you get to see the overly enlarged face of Ho Chi Minh along with all his moles with facial hair growing out of it. Then you get the famous chopper scene, but with the blinking light and people falling, for a minute I thought “What tha…?!?” as it was taking out civilians. Then there’s some Elvis and Marilyn scene and more raunchy scenes in contrast to the dragon dance.

Then as you approach the end, you see the inevitable coming, and before you know it, you’re balling. Then the climax, and Bam! Game over. Thank you for using Saigon Eye Lubrication Services. There was not a dry eye in the theatre, except maybe Jimmy and Andrew who adopted an analytical approach to watching musicals. For the rest of us, it left us in a funky state.

What’s missing from Miss Saigon is recurring melodies. In Les Miserables, you hear similar melodies over and over again, rehashed in different forms, so that when you leave the musical, the melody sticks out of your nose and ears. With Miss Saigon, there was nothing. Dead silence on the way back in the car, well, except for Andrew getting shut down but that’s a different story.

As we were leaving the theatre, we noticed that Jeffrey and Andrew decided to show their brotherhood:

Good thing they’re guys. I can’t imagine the pain and suffering for two girls to wear twin outfits to a musical…

On the way back, we discussed how musicals sometimes need to substitute actors of different races, and that the evil dude who got wasted by Miss Sai was not Vietnamese. But it wasn’t as disturbing as the last Les Miserables that we saw, where Fantine unexpectedly became Fantina (black), which… kind of changes things.

Anyway, in the end, it’s still worth watching Miss Saigon at least once, but remember to bring your tissues so you won’t be wetting your pants with your tears.