Musical ‘Saigon’ Adds to London’s Mack Attack

LONDON —  A pale-blue sign perched on a window ledge at 1 Bedford Square, waiting to be hung. It was a takeoff on the memorial plaques attached to old buildings where historic figures once lived or worked. “Cameron Mackintosh, producer, flourishes here,” it states, followed by the dates: “1988 to infinity.”

Forever, it’s been noted, is a long time. But someone or something certainly has been smiling on Mackintosh lately. He is the man with the Midas touch, according to the British press. He is “Big Mack,” with the string of hits that by one calculation still brings in upwards of $50,000 an hour in theaters around the world: “Cats” since 1981, “Les Miserables” from 1985, “Phantom of the Opera” since 1986.

And now, judging by all the indications, you can add “Miss Saigon” in 1989. The latest Mackintosh mega-musical, once planned for an American debut, tonight will premiere here instead at the venerable Theater Royal, Drury Lane. But weeks earlier, the word was already out that showgoers had better order their tickets early.

With more than $8 million in advance sales, “Miss Saigon” has “all the hallmarks of a huge hit,” said Vincent Burke, a spokesman for London’s largest ticket agency, Keith Prowse. “I’m regarding it as one of the events of the season.”

“It’s so staggeringly, beautifully staged!” said Baz Bamigboy, the widely respected entertainment columnist for the Daily Mail, after seeing a preview. “I was absolutely bowled over.”

“Miss Saigon” was written by the same French team that created “Les Miserables”--lyricist Alain Boublil and composer Claude-Michel Schonberg.

It is to “Madama Butterfly” what “West Side Story” was to Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet.”

The story is about a young Vietnamese prostitute and an American GI who fall in love in Saigon just as it is about to fall. They’re separated when the last Americans are airlifted from the U.S. Embassy. And only several years later does the GI, now married and living in America, discover that the Vietnamese girl and the child he didn’t know he had fathered by her have survived.

He eventually finds her in Bangkok. But upon learning that he is now married, the tragic young mother kills herself in order to assure that her son will get his chance in America.

Schonberg has said he was inspired by a magazine photograph showing a Vietnamese girl in New York to meet her American father for the first time. His lyricist partner Boublil liked the idea and by May, 1986, they had produced a tape of the first-act music for Mackintosh.

“I was just knocked out,” the producer said. He wanted to stage the show in the United States, but gave up the idea in the spring of 1988 when he found no suitable theater available.

In London, David Merrick’s “42nd Street” was ending the second-longest run in Drury Lane history--1,824 performances, trailing only “My Fair Lady” with 2,281. It meant postponing “Miss Saigon’s” opening for a time, but the famous theater, said to be the world’s oldest still in continuous use, had another attraction for Mackintosh. He started his theatrical career there--as a stagehand.

Mackintosh, 42, claims that his career goal has been to produce musicals ever since he saw “Salad Days” as an 8-year-old. Each of his shows, he said, has “a different special place in my life.”

The most exciting was “Cats,” which was “the show that gave me both my artistic and financial freedom.” A decade ago, he said, “I seriously would think about whether I had enough money to go to New York to meet someone.”

“Phantom” he considers “just a glorious entertainment . . . a wonderful evening at the theater. I don’t personally think it could be more than that.” The show appeals to the emotions, he said, “but in a fairy-tale sort of way.”

“Miss Saigon,” like “Les Miserables,” is different, Mackintosh said. Both shows “have to do with the reality of human nature” and have a powerful emotional appeal. “I think both could be around 50 years from now.”

Mackintosh makes no bones about his personal preference. “I think ‘Les Miserables’ is to date the most wonderful show I have done, and probably the one that will last the longest,” thanks to Victor Hugo’s story. “It’s about the most basic instinct in man, which is survival.”

By contrast, he said, “Miss Saigon” is a private story played against an epic backdrop.

“It’s not a general emotion; it’s a more specific emotion. . . . You get to know the characters in ‘Miss Saigon’ more intimately than those in ‘Les Miserables.’ ” Still, he said, “Miss Saigon” is “a very powerful theatrical production” that has had a more instantaneous favorable public reaction than any of his earlier shows.

Two of the reasons are Lea Salonga, a previously unknown 18-year-old Filipina who plays Kim, the Vietnamese prostitute, and Jonathan Pryce, a noted Shakespearean actor who plays her pimp, a character known only as “the engineer.”

The hunt for the show’s leading lady wound from London through New York, Los Angeles, Honolulu, and finally to Manila. The job description was tough, according to Edward Behr, author (“The Last Emperor” and “Anyone Here Been Raped and Speaks English?”) and honorary adviser on the show.

“She must combine stunning looks, the voice of an angel, and the operatic stamina of a Pavarotti,” he recalled in You magazine earlier this year.

Salonga, a part-time medical student who made her professional stage debut at the age of 7 in a Repertory Philippines production of “The King and I” and two years later played the title role in “Annie,” appears to fill the bill, exhibiting impressive range in a dozen numbers.

Meanwhile, according to director Nicholas Hytner, “we discovered Jonathan (Pryce) has the soul of a song-and-dance man.” His big and bitterly satirical second-act number, “The American Dream,” is a show-stopper.

Mackintosh admitted some concern that the number might be “misconstrued” by Americans. If either the song or any other part of the show is offensive to U.S. theatergoers “I’ll be very sorry, but I won’t regret it,” he said.

If you try to tailor a production to a particular market, the producer said, “you then end up at most with an original idea that has been ‘sat upon.’ With big successes, they work across the board because people have not compromised.”

Neither does he seem too worried that American audiences may have already overdosed on dramatic recollections of Vietnam. Mackintosh notes with pride that after the first preview of “Miss Saigon,” a former U.S. officer who served there described “the smell of it (as) dead right.” But in the end, Vietnam is only a setting. “Miss Saigon” is not about the war, and neither is it anti-American.

Mackintosh is coy about bringing his new show to the United States. “If the word of mouth in America for the show was consistently bad, even if they liked it in England, one would think twice about doing it in America,” he said.

While the cost and the critics make it more risky doing a big musical in the United States, however, “when you have a marvelous show, it works in any country.” In any case, it will take at least a year to mount a U.S. production, Mackintosh said.

One problem may be finding the right theater. Only the Ahmanson in Los Angeles might have big-enough facilities to accommodate the elaborate stage production of the Drury Lane version, according to Mackintosh. The U.S. Embassy evacuation scene is complete with helicopter; a postwar scene features a giant statue of Ho Chi Minh.

The musical staging for “Miss Saigon” is by American Bob Avian, who teamed with Michael Bennett for 20 years.

And what comes after “Miss Saigon” for Mackintosh?

He said he wants to continue working with Boublil and Schonberg “as long as they’re writing things that I can contribute to.” But first he is scheduled to take a break from the theater to make a movie of “Les Miserables.”