'Miss Saigon' big sis to 'Les Mis'

Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schönberg are grand writers indeed. They wrote the first French rock opera to hit the stage, "La Revolution Francais." Their musical adaptation of Victor Hugo's 1862 novel Les Miserables opened in 1980 in Palais des Sports in Paris, making it to Broadway only seven years later. \nTheir third collaboration, "Miss Saigon," although not at the same level of valorous grandeur as Les Miserable, stirs up the same sort of emotions in the audience.\nThe curtain opens to a lone Vietnamese girl with a tight spotlight on her. All of a sudden, the stage lights fade up and the hustle and bustle of Saigon, the capital city, comes into view. The girl, Kim, is a scared 17-year-old whose family has perished in the destruction of her village. She has no other choice but to come to the capital to "turn tricks."\nJennifer Paz plays the role of Kim in the premiere performance Tuesday. She returns to this tour after having played Kim in the first national touring production, where she worked with the legendary Cameron Mackintosh. She captures the character well, going from the scared demure girl to the fiercely protective mother.\nHer voice, emitting a crystal-clear timbre, take on the extremely challenging melodies of Schönberg, which seemed to not quite accommodate Richard Maltby Jr.'s English adaptation of Boublil's French lyrics.\nAlan Gillespie plays the American soldier Chris, who becomes Kim's lover. He was certainly American, and his tenor singing has a certain captivation in svelty songs like "The Last Night of the World." \nJohn, played by Wallace Smith, is Chris's buddy, sort of a B.J. Hunnicutt to Chris's Hawkeye Piece from M*A*S*H. He originally buys the services of Kim for Chris, and in the second act, he works for a humanitarian organization aiding the outcast half-American children born to Vietnamese women during the war. His song "Bui-Doi" allows him to utilize his rich gospel baritone that tugs at the heart as photos of Vietnamese orphans and underprivileged children flashed on a screen at the back of the stage.\nThe only issue with Gillespie is in the broad range of emotions his character is supposed to show. Gillespie's chiseled facial features seem to have hindered him from his character's desperation, intense anger and loving infatuation. He has those middle emotions down pat but comes up a bit mild with the extremes.\nA character who had the audience eating out of the palm of his hand was the Engineer. Portrayed by Jon Jon Briones, the Engineer is a jack of all trades: pimp, con man, barkeep and schmoozer. The Filipino-born Briones was in Mackintosh's original London cast and later played the Engineer in the German tour and the Asian tour. He gives this slimy character, who acts as an uncle-figure to Kim's child while she waits for Chris to return for her, an almost-noble aroma. His song "The American Dream" makes him shine, a projector showing images from American pop culture behind him and several Marilyn Monroe look-alikes dance with him on stage. This brought many audience members to double over with laughter.\n"Miss Saigon" is one of the most technically expensive and difficult shows to produce. During Act II, the script calls for a helicopter to land behind the gate of the American Embassy and take off shortly thereafter. Once, while touring in Hungary at an open-air auditorium, an actual helicopter landed on the stage.\nBecause of the limited airspace of the IU Auditorium (and most other performance venues), an amazingly life-like holographic projection is used. The image of the helicopter landing, the music and the chopping sound effects are perfectly synchronized. \nAnother prop that is extremely effective in the show is the large golden image of Ho Chi Minh in the second scene, after Saigon falls to the communist North Vietnamese. "The Morning of the Dragon" is sung by the VietCong soldiers, and Jodi Moccia's choreography is a brilliant combination of Nazi-like goose stepping and exotic Taiwanese swaying. Although the cultures clashed in Vietnam during the war and the communist regime, they are meshed beautifully in the dancing.\n"Les Miserables" brought a more personal insight into the terribly bloody French Revolution. Following its example, "Miss Saigon" brings to light the blunders and political injustices of the Vietnam War and the impact it had on the life of the Vietnamese citizens and the American soldier as well. Anyone going through the war could have been Kim or Chris. The issue is controversial still today, although the fighting ceased decades ago. It's all over but the singing.