Photo by Matthew Murphy

Based on Puccini's opera 'Madame Butterfly,' Saigon is perhaps the most operatic musical I have ever experienced. The epic scale of the production - only slightly revamped since its 1989 West End debut - still draws a "wow" factor from the audience. I can only imagine the number of jaws dropping during the musical's original run. This Broadway production boasts an impressive 36-strong cast and an 18-piece orchestra, and Mackintosh has spared no expense when it comes to both the bright lights and poverty-stricken sets. It runs like a well-oiled machine, as scenes flow into one another as gracefully as the score they accompany.

Speaking of the score, although it doesn't contain quite as many classics as Claude-Michel Schönberg and Alain Boublil's prior smash hit that goes by the eternal name of Les Misérables, each song hammers the yearnings of each character home with a full swing of a baseball bat. Alistair Brammer, reprising his role as Chris from the West End revival, coolly delivers "Why, God, Why?" from the steps whilst smoking a cigarette, but ends the song with such escalated emotion that he has us eating from the palm of his hand. Read our interview with Alistair Brammer HERE.

Olivier Award nominee Jon Jon Briones's "The American Dream" is gorgeously satirical and perverse, aided by show-stopping production elements. Indeed, Briones gives a stellar performance throughout as the infamous anti-hero The Engineer. Jonathan Pryce's original interpretation was so career-defining, despite controversies of casting a Caucasian in an Asian principal role, that the shoes were always going to be a large pair to fill. Briones, a native from the Philippines, relishes the challenge and delivers the nuanced, corrupted Engineer with an enticing glint in his eye. The entire show, however, becomes a theatrical event on the shoulders of one young lady making her Broadway debut. Eva Noblezada, who portrays Kim, is a bona fide star-in-the-making. Her vocals are nothing short of astonishing, leaving myself and fellow audience members with chills through her renditions of "I'd Give My Life for You" and "This is the Hour." I'm still unsure as to why Eva wasn't recognised at London's Olivier Awards and I was happy to see her well-deserved Tony nomination here in New York.

Yes, Miss Saigon is melodramatic to the extreme, but if you let your guard down and allow some emotional stimulation in, you will be moved to tears before that helicopter flees the stage in all its glory... And I nearly got through the whole piece without mentioning that bleedin' chopper!

Click here for tickets to Miss Saigon for performances through to January 14, 2018 at the Broadway Theatre.

- by Tom Millward