Miss Saigon, Edinburgh Playhouse review****: a truly magnificent revival
A voice behind me summed up the evening in one word. Wow.
This revival of Miss Saigon is simply magnificent - a feast for all the senses.
Boublil and Schönberg’s legendary musical has been given more than just a makeover for this tour which has only just started, and will keep the cast on the road until well into 2026. Already it has found its groove.
It may be based on Pucciniu’s Madam Butterfly, written in 1904, and set in the dying days of Saigon in the mid 1970s, but its themes are timeless - doomed love, the moral and human cost of war, and how one person’s vulnerabilities are another’s opportunities to be exploited.
The story is based around a young teenage girl, Kim, (Julianne Pundan) who flees her village following a raid and lands in the heart of a seedy Saigon where anything goes, and she is employed by the engineer (Seann Miley Moore) at his nightclub where GI troops gather.
She meets, and falls in love, with Chris (Jack Kane), but their time together is cut short as he is shipped out and he cannot find way to take her with him amid the chaos of the last hours of Saigon.
He returns home with a head full of shellshock and trauma, she endures the return of her cousin to whom she was betrothed as a young girl, and tragedy follows. Her journey takes her on to Bangkok with the eternal hope of a reunion with the GI she loves.
Pundan is simply sensational as Kim - a remarkable professional debut - while Miley Moore is mesmerising. He commands the stage as the sassy, exploitative, devilish ringmaster of the twilight worlds of bars, girls, drugs and promises of a good time, and he steals the show with his dazzling showstopper, The American Dream.
The musical score is powerful from the very start - Kane and Pundan make for a fantastic pairing - and, of course, we get the legendary helicopter rescue scene, with the sound of the blades whirling round the theatre. This is a must see show. As the voice in the crowd said, wow.
> Miss Saigon: The Legend Reborn, at the Edinburgh Playhouse until Saturday, November 1. Tickets here