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This month Opera Australia opens Miss Saigon, the Vietnam War musical that has attracted scathing criticism and enduring popularity since its 1989 London premiere. It tells the story of Kim, a war orphan from rural Vietnam, who is forced to work as a Saigon bar girl, where she attracts the attention of an American soldier.
When the original production transferred to Broadway in 1991, it came under fire for casting Welsh actor Jonathan Pryce as the Engineer, a Eurasian pimp, for which he wore “Asian” eye prosthetics.
More than 30 years later, representation issues still weigh on the cast.
Abigail Adriano and Seann Miley Moore both recall how the entertainment industry was not set up for Asian Australians when they started out.Credit: Dion Georgopoulos
Filipino-Australian pop singer Seann “SMM” Miley Moore, cast as this production’s Engineer, is frank about the Australian entertainment industry. “My first show was [Opera Australia’s] The King and I in 2014 and our Thai king was a white man. I was like ‘Hello? That’s problematic’.
“Growing up here was hard. Any Asians on TV were the butt of jokes; it was all stereotyping. So to have a career I had to leave the country. That’s the sad truth. I was like ‘I’m brown. I’m queer. But I’ve got this main character energy and I can sing these huge songs’.”
Shortly after The King and I, Miley Moore moved to the UK, where they felt “accepted” in their pop music industry.
Abigail Adriano plays opposite Nigel Huckle as Chris, an American soldier.Credit: David Hooley
Filipino-Australian actor Abigail Adriano, who plays Kim and is more than 10 years younger than Miley Moore, has had similar experiences. “My first professional theatre experience was in 2015 when I was 11, playing Alice in Tim Minchin’s Matilda, when they started casting more diverse kids. I knew I could sing all Matilda’s parts. But my agent said ‘Sorry, no, they don’t want Asian girls for Matilda’.
“But that’s why Miss Saigon is special, because it’s the one show where they actually need Asian actors.”
Jermaine Chau, a Hong Kong Australian mezzo-soprano, and the co-founder of Blush Opera, thinks that Opera Australia missed an opportunity to explore current issues.
“In high school, my Chinese-Malaysian friends and I were obsessed with Miss Saigon because it was the closest thing we could get to representation on the musical stage. But Miss Saigon is not really representative of women, or Asian women, or even trying to address historical issues. It’s about a sex worker falling in love with a person who’s abusing her. So, why is it appropriate to retell this 1989 story almost verbatim now?
“At Blush, we always ask first ‘is the story worth telling?’ Beautiful music isn’t enough – there’ll always be great tunes. New, relevant work is more important. Miss Saigon is rehashing the norms of three decades ago, which is problematic because these issues are moving so fast. The question is ‘who is the target market?’ and for Miss Saigon it’s still the kind of middle-aged white couple with disposable income who want to see a musical at the Opera House.”
Chau admits that if she were offered the role of Kim, she would take it. “Because the work for Asian artists is still not out there, unless we’re doing yellowface. So criticising Miss Saigon also means you have to ask ‘If this wasn’t on, what other professional opportunity and income would Asian talent in the cast get?’ The answer is – not much.
“And Miss Saigon earns revenue, and the arts are financially struggling. You don’t want the industry you love to collapse either. So, it’s not just about race and being woke. We have to be nuanced in how we think about these things.”
Miss Saigon director Jean Pierre van der Spuy acknowledges the controversy around the musical.
Having grown up in South Africa amid apartheid protest theatre, he is painfully aware that depicting real events on stage is fraught.
Seann Miley Moore in rehearsals for Miss Saigon.Credit: David Hooley
“When I was directing the production in 2021, we were dealing with all the parallels to the American pullout from Afghanistan. Then there’s been Black Lives Matter and #MeToo. It makes you think ‘Gosh, this piece is still so relevant’ and question how we, as a world, stop perpetrating the same historical atrocities.”
He says that directing Miss Saigon is a great responsibility. “We can’t get away from the fact it’s a musical tackling heavy subjects, but I hope that keeps us attuned to being sensitive, and that the way we tell these stories has evolved.”
Van der Spuy asked the cast to watch documentaries (his favourites are the Oscar-winning Hearts and Minds and Last Days in Vietnam) before creating lengthy character biographies. He also brought on board Vietnamese-American resident director, Theresa Nguyen.
It’s a level of detail he suspects was missing from earlier productions.
“Where you have these elements you need cultural consultation, like with a First Nations or Holocaust piece,” says Chau.
Rather than hiring a singular cultural consultant, the company has engaged a number of people in similar roles. During auditions, Filipino-American director Kenneth Moraleda was the production’s Equity and Inclusivity Consultant. Since rehearsals began, Vietnamese-Australian actor Vico Thai has worked as Inclusivity and Assistant Company Manager, and Vietnamese-Australian composer Michelle Nguyen as Assistant Music Director and Vietnamese Language Advisor.
Van der Spuy says: “We’ve got some really fabulous Vietnamese people who are working on the production.”
Adriano turned to her aunt’s Chinese-Vietnamese husband for insight. “His family were at the fall of Saigon, and I was lucky they were happy to talk about it. How sensitive it was and the tension at the time, to think ‘to survive we have to drop everything, pack our bags, and leave tomorrow’.”
Miley Moore draws on their mother’s resilience as an Asian migrant to play the Engineer. “I remember seeing Miss Saigon for the first time as a kid in Hong Kong. I was this young queen looking up at these hot, fierce Asian women on stage being totally unapologetic in themselves. Sexy, strong, and hustling. I was amazed. And I said, ‘Mum, that’s like you. You got out and hustled to make a better life’.”
Abigail Adriano and Seann Miley Moore star as Kim and the Engineer in Miss Saigon.Credit: Dion Georgopoulos
They dismiss criticism that Miss Saigon portrays Asian women as submissive and sexualised, and Asian men as weak villains. “It’s layered, it’s about survival … We’re bringing all our family histories in. It’s feeling the ancestry and telling the stories that everyone sees in those heartbreaking images.
“As an Asian cast we have something to say, and it’s real. There has been definite strength in that. Everyone knows the official history, but we’re coming from the real stories: that survival, strength, and total veracity to have a better life.”
Miss Saigon is at Opera House Joan Sutherland Theatre, Sydney, until October 13; and Her Majesty’s Theatre, Melbourne, from October 29 to December 3.
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This story has been updated to reflect that Opera Australia has employed several Vietnamese people across the production team to advise on appropriateness, sensitivities and accuracy.
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