DIRECTOR: Bill Millerd
CHOREOGRAPHER: Valerie Easton
MUSICAL DIRECTOR: Bruce Kellett
Summer 2005
Arts Club Theatre Company
Stanley Industrial Alliance Stage
I will always remember Miss Saigon at the Arts Club because it was the show on which I received my membership to Canadian Actors’ Equity Association. It also had a pretty sweet helicopter land on stage.
About the Show
A classic love story is brought up-to-date in one of the most stunning theatrical spectacles of all time. In “Miss Saigon,” Alain Boublil and Claude-Michael Schönberg (the creators of “Les Misérables”), along with Richard Maltby, Jr., bring Puccini’s “Madame Butterfly” to the modern world in a moving testament to the human spirit and a scathing indictment of the tragedies of war.
In the turmoil of the Vietnam War, an American soldier and a Vietnamese girl fall in love, only to be separated during the fall of Saigon. Their struggles to find each other over the ensuing years ends in tragedy for her and a fighting chance for the child he never knew he had.
An international sensation, “Miss Saigon” is an epic, daring pop opera that is universal in its emotional power even as it deals with controversial, contemporary issues. Its sung-through pop-inflected score gives a multi-ethnic cast of strong pop singers an opportunity to shine, in showstopping numbers like “I Still Believe,” “Why God Why?” and “The American Dream.” Meanwhile, its fluid cinematic structure gives directors and designers a field day.
Raw and uncompromising, “Miss Saigon” is an intensely personal story of the losses we suffer and the sacrifices we make in a world gone mad.