Melodius Masterpiece
(The Tribune - Christopher Abbey)

A transitory helicopter's thunderous roar supplants the traditionaloverture and transforms the stage into the crowded streetsof 1975 Saigon.  Based on the enduring Madame Butterfly, Boublil and Schonberg (who gave us Les Miserables) have transformed this tragic tale, laced with war's effects on society, into an absorbing musical.

The Abbey Musical Theatre presents a melodious masterpiece that is gripping, dramatic, heartrending and entirely entertaining.

The Abbey's collaboration to pool resources with six other New Zealand musical groups has furnished superb scenery,dazzling costumes, imposing props and impressive effects for the director to populate with inspired casting and staging.

Barry Jones' large, energetic orchestra expressively supplies both mood and music and sympathetically compliments solo and ensemble singing of breathtaking intensity.

The backstage team provides spell-binding lightning and electrical effects, smooth slick scene-shifting, both trucks and flies, and full-on sound - all contributing to a visual and aural feast.

Director/Choreographer Stephen Robertson has melded this highly-talented company into one of the finest stage productions to ever grace the Regent.  Imported from America to play the petite Kim, Melinda Chua is a casting masterstroke.  She invests this most endearing of heroines with an intensity of voice and acting that ensures there isn't a dry eye in the house.  Her stage presence has star quality.  Local actor Bradford Meurk complements her as the love-struck Amrican Chris and his strong characterisation adds another step up on his promising acting and singing career.  Their duets, especially Last Night of the World, are stunningly moving.  Taking over the role of John at short notice, Chris Crowe offers polished strong support to his fellow GI and delivers an admirable passionate anti-war message in his highly emotional rendition of the child refugee song Bui Doi.  Amy Hunt (Ellen), Kyle Chuen (Thuy) and Carrie Green (Gigi) flesh out their characters admirably contributing compelling vocal portrayals in theirsolos.  But it is Scott Andrew's Enginner who links the dramatic events as Saigon falls and he pursues his American dream in Bangkok.  His melodramatic portrayal of one of life's misfits is encapsulated in the emotive If You Want to Die In Bed. His is a tour de force performance of one of theatre's great roles.

The atmosphere surrounding these troubled times is enhanced by the ever-present versatile ensemble of local actors that play multiple roles in fleshing out scenes of tawdry nightlife, violent demonstrations, military attack and retreat, emotional evacuations and American decadence.  A behind-the-scenes chorus boosts complex harmonies and a group of children endow the panic of evacuees with chilling realism.  And scene-stealing 3-year-old Tam's unspoken performance is unforgettable.

Aside from a missing fade on the bedroom scene to denote time passing, there is no weak point to this production of one of the best musicals of the modern era.  This is world class theatre on our local stage.

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Outstanding Sad Drama
(Manawatu Standard - Michelle Duff)

Last night the audience at the Regent on Broadway was swept away to the steamy streets of Saigon.  There they were told of a story of a Vietnamese mother's love for her son, and for an American man who she ultimately could not have.

The heartwrenching tale that is Miss Saigon was played to a full on opening last night.

Every twist and turn in the timeless story was captivating - and if there was a dry eye left at its finish, this reviewer didn't see it.

Freelance director Stephen Robertson spent three months putting the actors and singers, the majority local, through their paces for this show.  The professionalism showed.

The story follows Vietnamese woman, Kim, as she falls in love with American GI Chris, before the fall of Saigon  to Communist forces during the Vietnam war.

Chris and Kim are torn apart, but not before their romantic liaison leaves Kim with a son, Tam.  What follows is beautiful and devastating.

The cast are superb, with American actress Melinda Chua setting the standard with her gripping rendition of the lead role of Kim.  The pairing of her and Palmerston North actor Bradford Meurk as Chris is perfect.  Their chemistry is palpable, their acting authentic, their voices complementary.

Scott Andrew is absolutely brilliant as The Engineer, a pimp who bullies Kim into selling herself.  He's slimy and sneaky, crawling from scene to scene with a thinly-veiled contempt for anyone who's not him and when's on stage alone, he owns the moment.

Baritone Chris Crowe takes on the role of John with aplomb, and Carrie Green plays a Vietnamese prostitue with empathy and real feeling.

The sets are amazing, extravagant yet intimate, creating everything from the glitzy glam of the American dream to the tired-looking, worn out shell of Kim's bedroom.

Special mention must be made of the scene where Chris leaves Saigon, with a distraught Kim left with hundreds of others outside the American embassy as a rising Iraquois takes him away.  The ensemble cast act as devastated Vietnamese, begging to be taken to America for a better life.  Like so much else in this story, it's incredibly sad and also very real.

If there's one show you go and see this year, Miss Saigon should be it.  It's musical theatre at its best, and right here in Palmerston North.

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High-powered Production
(The Guardian - Richard Mays)

Dramatic events of 30-odd years ago are given the big budget stage treatment in this gritty musical drama.  From the creators of Les Mis, Miss Saigon revisits a number of similar themes.  Opening in the final days of the Vietnam War, it's a little bit Madame Butterfly, but the parallels with Alain Boublil and Claude Michel-Schonberg's earlier 1980 smash are easy to spot.

Instead of Valjean, there's Kim, a 17 year old orphan picked off the streets to work in the seedy Dreamland bar run by The Engineer, a grafting opportunist in the Thenardier mould.  Stalking Kim is her cousin Thuy, the man she has been betroth, and who is as relentless and as obsessed as Inspector Javert.  Having fallen for Chris, a young American marine, Kim gets left behind in the panic when Saigon suddenly falls to the North Vietnamese.  Chris doesn't know it, but Kim is carrying his child.

Back Stateside, the depressed Chris is nursed back to sanity and marries Ellen - a situation redolent of the Marius, Cossette and Eponine love triangle from Les Mis.  there is even the equivalent of 'I Dreamed a Dream' in the songs 'The Movie in my Mind' and 'The American Dream', while the Saigon prostitues mirror the dispossessed of the Parisian slums.  Crowd scenes featuring the company are superbly co-ordinated, especially the evocative Red Flag dance, and the mad scramble surrounding the last American helo out of Saigon.

Spectacular sets, stunning sound and lighting effects, striking costumes and set pieces, and grand orchestration from Barry Jones' well honed 21 piece ensemble heighten its epic scale.

And there is not a weak performance.  For all her considerable experience in the role, Melinda Chua plays Kim as if she is revealing the character for the very first time.  Possessing a powerfu the diminutive performer perfectly captures the sensitivity, as well as the anguish and passionate desperation, of surviving love and loss, with eloquence and freshness.

The calous Engineer is plugged into the "dark side" by Scott Andrew.  It's not a subtle portrayal -doggedly conniving, insensitive and grimly effective, despite some words being difficult to hear in the first act.  Young Bradford Meurk as Chris continues to grow in stature as a performer, playing alongside the most impressive Kyle Chuen as the unrelenting Thuy, and Chris Crowe as army buddy, John.  Opening the second act, Crowe's pinstriped presence was practically Presidential.  As Ellen, Amy Hunt reveals a tremendous set of pipes, making the most of her limited stage time.

The multi-layered Miss Saigon is a huge undertaking with its historical flashbacks, dream sequence, and its cultural, political, physical and psychological conflicts.  Well paced, this high-energy production is a towering achievement that you really should experience for yourself.

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Moving Musical's Powerful Performance
(Feilding Herald - Joan Ford)

Claude-Michel Schonberg, writer of the music for Miss Saigon, by chance saw a photo in a magazine.  He was appalled at the image of a child about to board a plan for America to live with her ex-GI father that she had never met.  Her face is creased with tears; she will never see her Vietnamese mother again.  The desolation of the mother on the other side of the barrier was the catalyst for Schonberg and Alain Boublil to write Miss Saigon.  How does a mother make 'The Ultimate Sacrifice'?

The show opens at the backstage of the Dreamland bar.  Vietnamese prostitutes prepare to sell themselves.  The Engineer (Scott Andrew) has just discovered untouched flesh with the recently orphaned Kim (Melinda Chua).  She will be a new girl for the war weary soldiers to buy, guaranteed to titillate the hard and weary soldiers to part drunkenly with their money.

Chris, an American soldier (Bradford Meurk) fed up and tired from war comes to the bar with his friend, John (Chris Crowe).  John buys Kim for Chris, hoping it will cheer him up.  Kim takes Chris back to her room.  The opening scenes at the bar only gently portray the pitiful brutality that these young women face.  Maybe this was a ploy to primarily focus on the burgeoning love story of Kim and Chris.  They were enchanting together and their voices soared with "Sun and Moon".  The sudden entrance of Thuy (Kyle Chuen) may ruin Kim's chance of true love.  Thuy had bee promised Kim as his bride by her late father.  Kim tells him that as her father is dead, the promise can be broken.  She loves Chris and he has promised to take her to America.  Yet powers much stronger are working against the young lovers - Chris returns to America alone.

It is now three years later and the precision of crew with faultless scene changes and the choreography of the performers with "The Morning of the Dragon" was a visual feast.  Thuy is now a leader within the new regime and Kyle Chuen's ability to command the stage and his strong voice made these scenes memorable.  Thuy seeks out The Engineer and orders him to find Kim and bring her to him.  Kim is now a mother and she will do anything for her son's welfare and safety.

Melinda Chua was nothing less than amazing in her role as Kim; every word that she sung was so clear to understand.  Every note she effortlessly reached pulled at the heartstrings of the audience.  Scott Andrew as The Engineer, a vital role, will engineer everything that happens in the story slowly grew in his role.  His rendition of "The American Dream" towards the end of the second act was striking.  From the beginning of his explanation as a half breed child when he touted for his prostitute mother to French monsieurs to his vision to have the American dream was vividly portrayed, he would stop at nothing to obtain an entry visa.  Chris Crowe as John gave a powerful performance throughout.  Having left the army he now works to help the orphans left behind as a result of war in Vietnam.  At a rally to raise funds in Atlanta, his poignant song "Bui Doi" opened the second act.  "Like all survivors, I once thought when I'm home I won't give a damn, but now I'm caught I'll never leave Vietnam.  War isn't over when it ends, some pictures never leave your mind.  They are the faces of the children, the ones we left behind.  They're called Bui Doi, the dust of life, conceived in hell and born in strife."  Chris and his new wife, Ellen,come to see John in Atlanta, and the discovery is made that Chris has a young son left behind in Vietnam.  What will Kim do?  She believes that Chris will come back and take her and their son back to America.

Everyone involved, be it on stage or backstage, must be heartily congratulated for the tremendous work they have put in.  Audiences will certainly appreciate this production that works with such passion and precision.