The pared-down set for Vintage Theatre’s “Miss Saigon” suggests that director Rebecca Joseph, her cast and scenic designer Tobias Harding embraced the challenge of presenting a big show in an intimate, 145-seat setting.
But once the orchestra opens and the singing begins, it appears the same wisdom hadn’t been applied to the music. A recent Sunday matinee had the kind of uneven singing — it soared, it veered — that seemed the result of vocal tiredness. A push toward the emotionally full-throated appeared to put a strain on the performers, especially the clearly gifted leads: Regina Fernandez Steffen, who portrays Kim, and somewhat less so, Rob Riney, who plays Chris, her American GI lover.
One could blame this on the operatic roots of “Miss Saigon, ” which takes its doomed, cross-cultural romance from Giacomo Puccini’s “Madame Butterfly” and relocates it to the final days of U.S. military involvement in Vietnam.
Listen to the original cast album and it’s understandable why one might want to go big vocally. There’s epic, brazen sentiment to the show, created by Claude-Michel Schönberg and Alain Boblil — the gents of “Les Misérables” — along with Richard Maltby Jr.
Yet a fresh opportunity was missed. Boublil’s and Maltby’s lyrics would welcome subtle singing over spectacle. “Do you want to hear how my village was burned?” Kim sings at Chris in their early duet “This Money’s Yours.” It is her first night working at Dreamland, the Saigon club/brothel lorded over by the Engineer.
Although, Steffen and Riney have sharp moments throughout the show, Kim and Chris’ chemistry feels faint. Their romance happens in time lapse. On some level this makes sense: This is romance during wartime. But it also makes the ache and moral conflict at the heart of “Miss Saigon” more elusive.
Still, Joseph has made an impressively bold choice in casting actress Arlene Rapal as the Engineer. Jonathan Pryce originated the emcee/pimp role.
Call her Madam. Rapal has deliciously base fun as the show’s most opportunistic character. Though her singing isn’t pristine, she nails Act II’s showstopping, profoundly cynical song-and-high-kicking number “American Dream” just the same.
She also adds an intriguing dynamic to a familiar show, one that invites us to re-engage issues of corruption as well as the gender-bound disasters of warfare.
From the show’s start, the Vietnamese characters are hustling to get out of the failing country. The women in Dreamland hope to land more than a trick when they cozy up to the GIs. In “The Movie in My Mind,” Kim and Gigi (a charismatic Samantha Saunders) capture the rickety fantasy of escapism.
As Vietnam unravels, well-intentioned promises go unkept. Chris leaves. Kim waits. Stateside, he marries Ellen. In Vietnam, Kim has their son, Tam. Dwarfed by the goings-on, child ( alternately Samantha Canete, Marissa Richards or Everest Xiong) embodies bewilderment and abject vulnerability.
Abby McInerney gives a commanding, melodic turn as Ellen. From across an ocean, she and Kim share one of the strongest numbers in Act I, the aching “I Still Believe.”
Chachi Martin gives a dramatically anchored turn as Thuy, the cousin once betrothed to Kim. Over the course of the show, he rises in the ranks of the North Vietnamese Army and still intends to claim to Kim.
Act II is a decided — and moving — improvement over the first act. It opens with Chris’ friend and fellow soldier John singing of the mixed-race children left behind. “Bui Doi” contains some of the show’s most plaintive lyrics. “They are the living reminders/Of all the good we failed to do, actor Keegan Flaugh sings passionately. A tight chorus of male company members backs him as images of Amerasian children are projected on a scrim.
“Why does nothing here make sense?” Chris sings in “Why God Why” after he falls for Kim.
It’s a lament that permeates even this sturdy but not fully realized production — as well as our history.
Lisa Kennedy: 303-954-1567, lkennedy@denverpost.com or
“MISS SAIGON”
Music by Claude-Michel Schonberg. Written by Richard Maltby Jr. and Alain Boublil. Directed by Rebecca Joseph. Featuring Arlene Rapal, Regina Fernandez Steffen, Rob Riney, Keegan Flaugh and Chachi Martin. Through Feb. 1. 2 hours 50 minutes At the Vintage Theatre, 1468 Dayton St., Aurora. Tickeets $26-$31 via or 303-856-7830.
