Exciting! - Miss Saigon IS coming back to the West End!
Posted on 20 December 2012
Followers on our Twitter and Facebook pages will know already of our love for the musical Miss Saigon, which frequently tops our polls as to which show is overdue a West End return. In a recent interview with The Philippine Star to promote the upcoming big-screen version of Les Miserables, the show's original producer Cameron Mackintosh has confirmed that plans are already underway to bring the much-loved show back to London.
Recent auditions in Manila led the to paper to quiz the theatre producer about rumours that he was planning on rebooting the show. “Yes, I’m going to restage Miss Saigon in London as soon as I find the theatre" he confirmed. "We have started preliminary auditions. When we did the show in London 25 years ago, we spent over a year looking for the cast. I hope that in the next 18 months it would be back in London. The new version has just opened here in Japan and it’s a phenomenal success. It’s going to be a different production but still the same great Miss Saigon.”
He even went on to muse that a film version of the show could even be "possible", dependent on the success of the new Les Miserables film. If early reviews of the Hugh Jackman, Russell Crowe and Anne Hathaway movie adaptation are anything to go by, it looks like that film is set to be a box office smash.
Miss Saigon, directed by Nicholas Hytner, opened at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane in 1989 and was an immediate hit with critics and audiences alike and remained in the venue for a decade. Subsequent succesful productions opened around the globe and it has long since retained a loyal fanbase clamouring for the show to make a big-scale return. The original year-long casting process in the UK unearthed 17-year old Lea Salonga who went on to win both Olivier and Tony awards for her portrayal of the show's leading lady, Kim. The Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schönberg production is based on Puccini's opera Madame Butterfly and follows the doomed romance between young mother Kim and American GI Chris whose platoon is based in Vietnam.
The production features timeless songs such as the rousing The Heat Is On In Saigon, emotional duets The Last Night Of The World and I Still Believe and stunning ballad Sun And Moon.
Rest assured, as soon as any more details are announce, we will keep you posted!
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