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| Michael Feingold’s 1991 pan | |
| Posted by: singleticket 01:10 am EST 11/22/22 | |
| In reply to: Theatre group pulls play from Sheffield venue staging Miss Saigon - young-walsingham 04:24 pm EST 11/21/22 | |
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| To impose the kitsch tragedy of the betrayed geisha and her feckless American lover on the very real tragedy of the betrayed Asian country is a trick of exploitation that someone involved with Miss Saigon must have thought very clever. | |
| Link | Excepts from Feingold’s 1991 review |
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| re: Michael Feingold’s 1991 pan | |
| Posted by: EvFoDr 02:04 pm EST 11/22/22 | |
| In reply to: Michael Feingold’s 1991 pan - singleticket 01:10 am EST 11/22/22 | |
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| Miss Saigon is problematic and that can be discussed, but this review is a bit over the top in assigning such sinister INTENTIONS to the creators. I think some of the OUTCOMES are undeniably problematic, such as the nonsense instead of real Vietnamise, and the hard doubling down on the casting of Pryce ALONG with the yellowface make up. But I think, at least Boublil and Schonberg, had demonstrated depth in their interest in the telling of Les Miz, brimming with humanity and exploration of the human conidition, which was by no means a slam dunk even though we know it became wildly successful. And if you believe them, it was a photo of a child being torn from their mother that inspired them. Do people really think they cyncially thought "we will trick and exploit audiences with this concept!" And they did funnel some of the money to orphange(s) and/programs to help these children. | |
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| "28 YEARS LATER, I STILL DON’T 'MISS SAIGON'" | |
| Last Edit: singleticket 04:22 pm EST 11/22/22 | |
| Posted by: singleticket 04:08 pm EST 11/22/22 | |
| In reply to: re: Michael Feingold’s 1991 pan - EvFoDr 02:04 pm EST 11/22/22 | |
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| It's definitely over the top! And it's meant to be so but there's a moral outrage in the criticism as well. I think a lot of it has to do with the downtown theater scene that the Village Voice covered and which Feingold represented to some extent (in other ways I think he resisted being yoked to "downtown theater" culture). Attached is his reminiscence of the review 28 years later: I think probably what pushed me over the edge was the film shown at the top of the second act, showing actual half-American Vietnamese war orphans. A great many people were infuriated by this, including a fair number of my fellow critics. Mackintosh donated a large sum of money to the orphanage where the film was shot, and put a sign up in the lobby saying so, but that didn’t make the outrage—using the plight of actual children to jerk tears for a commercial piece of pop kitsch—any less repugnant. Puccini would not have stooped to it. |
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| Link | 28 YEARS LATER, I STILL DON’T “MISS SAIGON” |
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