Miss Saigon School Edition at Grand Opera House Belfast until Sunday July 21 2019
Director Tony Finnegan said it was a massive team effort and that sums up Miss Saigon at the Grand Opera House in Belfast.
On stage, behind the scenes and in the orchestra pit teenagers put on a show that held the audience from beginning to end. The story is simple, set in 1975 during the Vietnam War, a tragic time when, as in most wars, some of the visiting troops fall for local girls, most to love and leave but now and again a real romance blossoms with all the consequences.
On opening night the attraction was between GI Chris, Ronan Johnson (a 16-year-old pupil at St Patrick’s Academy Dungannon) and the innocent Kim, a bar girl played by Victoria McClements (18 years of age and studying at Antrim Grammar School). They meet in the Dreamland bar and brothel, dance together and then retire to a room where Kim has her first sexual encounter with a man. They fall in love and he wants to take her home with him to America but it wasn’t to be.
There are some splendid ‘big’ numbers including when the GIs are ordered home and steel barricades are put up to keep the women away from the men including Kim who is pleading for Chris to come and get her and his child she is carrying. As the noise builds the screaming is drowned out as a helicopter, built by the stage crew, comes slowly down, headlights dazzling and noise deafening. Chris is forced to go.
Another highlight is the chilling march of the North Vietnamese Army, rows and rows of soldiers all in black with red headbands; also the Cabaret when Engineer, who runs the brothel, just like all the women, thinks about living in America and this exuberant number brings comedy to the serious and tragic storyline.
There are some very strong performances from the two lovers, also from Louis Fitzpatrick (18 and a Methodist College pupil) who has an extremely fine voice and Conor O’Brien the Engineer (18 and attending Aquinas Diocesan Grammar) who has a flair for engaging the audience. There are tender moments and high drama and you’d be a cold stone if you didn’t have a lump in your throat when Chris and his American wife, Lara Mulgrew from Aquinas Grammar, arrive to find Kim and her son Tam, the enchanting Adam Hegarty aged 4 from Bangor, however, to be sure her son will have a father and a good home in America, Kim sacrifices herself and dies in her lover’s arms.
One of the most ambitious and successful Summer Youth productions yet.
www.goh.co.uk for details
