One of the advantages of the sung-through musical, of which this is the latest example, is that one is so busy trying to catch the thread of the story through the lyrics one is inclined to overlook their mawkishness. We are a very long way indeed in  Miss Saigon from elegance and style of Ira Gershwin, Lorenz Hart and Cole Porter, or even the sincerely-felt sentimentality of Oscar Hammerstein II. Here the lyrics, by Richard Maltby Jr and Alain Boubil, are as predictable as the plot, which is a straightforward lift, without any acknowledgements whatsoever, from Madame Butterfly, the characters being placed in war-torn Saigon and the sleazier part of Bangkok rather than Nagasaki.

 

Having said that, however, there is no doubt that this second West End musical by the writers of Les Miserables is often a thrilling theatrical experience, though often aimed at the senses more than the heart. The bustle and panic of Saigon’s streets, the live-for-today philosophy of the bars and clubs both in Saigon and Bangkok, is strikingly conveyed. There is a frisson of fear as Ho Chi Minh’s troops, bearing a huge statue of their leader, arrive to occupy the city, a feeling of awe as a helicopter descends to carry away the last American forces, among them the marine Chris Scott, cruelly parted from Kim, the inexperienced bar girl with whom he has fallen in love, who will soon become the mother of his child.

 

But oddly enough, the story, possibly because of its familiarity, fails to move one as it should, certainly not in the way Les Miserables did. There is no feeling of history here, more of a contrived plot in the manner of Cabaret, an impression strengthened by the character of the engineer who can be equated with MC in the Kander and Ebb musical. This is indeed a wonderful performance by Jonathan Pryce, not only a fine actor, but a considerable singer, in the role of the bar-owning hustler who uses Kim for his own ends, chiefly a desire to get to the States, where you can share in The American Dream, the show’s big production number, which gives the impression of being included simply to provide a satirically upbeat finale.

 

Claude-Michel Schonberg’s music trails echoes of his previous score all over the place, even to the underscoring, given a touch of Oriental percussion to impart a local flavour, but is excellently sung by the enchanting Lea Salonga as Kim and Simon Bowman as Chris, with strong support from Claire Moore as Chris’s American wife and Peter Polycarpou as his service friend who dedicates himself in civilian life to looking after the Vietnamese children of American servicemen. There is a nicely sinister portrayal too  by Keith Burns as Kim’s promised Vietnamese husband whose death lies heavily on her conscience.

 

Above all,  there is no denying that it is brilliantly staged by Nicholas Hytner, with a series of breath-taking designs by John Napier, who expertly contrasts the decadence of Saigon with a rigorous puritanism of its fellow countrymen from the North.