Miss Saigon in Adelaide

The first time I heard about this musical was in the early 90s when Lea Salonga became the first to take on the lead female role in the West End production. I distinctly remember listening to the CD of this musical, with a lyric book in hand. And by the end of it all, I was actually crying! I remember there was a sad ending, but the details were quite hazy. So I guess it must have been the part when Kim and Chris were separated. One thing for sure, I considered the 'Sun and Moon' song as my favourite in the whole musical.

Since then the musical has reached the US, parts of Asia (including Manila in 2000), and now its in Australia. When hubby found out, he got us matinée tickets so that we could watch it while the kids were in school. Kinda like an early Valentine's date. We have never watched a musical together so we were really looking forward to this 'date'.

Finally, the day arrived and we saw the show. We got really good seats in the middle of the theatre. We noticed though that the crowd was made up mostly of elderly people. This could have been the normal matinée crowd here. Still the place was packed, hardly any seats were left vacant.

Since it was the matinée show, we did not expect any of the lead actors to be there. But to our surprise we later found out that it was our very own Leo Valdez playing the Engineer and boy did he carry the show! Some songs were better than others. I expected to be carried away with the 'Sun and Moon' duet, but was a bit disappointed in the delivery. Somehow I wasn't drawn into the emotion of the song. But there was another song that did .... the song about Kim for her child that she would die for him, that made me cry bucketloads! Why did I not bring tissues this time?! This time around I could relate more to the maternal theme of the story instead of the romantic angle. By the time the show ended and the lights came on, lots of other people in the audience had tissues in hand (including hubby, hehehe). Ha! ... I was not alone.