The 25th anniversary performance of Miss Saigon will be broadcast in cinemas across the UK on 16 October, it has recently been confirmed, with the iconic musical celebrating its quarter of a century by reaching even more audiences. Miss Saigon is Claude-Michel Schönberg, Alain Boublil and Richard Maltby’s musical loosely inspired by Puccini’s opera Madame Butterfly. The anniversary staging which was recorded for the broadcast saw 20,000 people try to book tickets within the first five minutes of tickets being released, demonstrating the extent of the musical’s popularity.
Ahead of the release into cinemas later in the year, a new trailer for the event has been released ahead of the screenings. The musical was recorded in front of a live audience at the Prince Edward Theatre in the West End where the musical was playing. This was done back in September 2014. The decision was made not to to digitally remove the stage microphones from the performers, in order to remind cinema viewers of the fact it is a stage production rather than a film.
Jonathan Pryce, Lea Salonga and Simon Bowman were some of the past Miss Saigon alumni who featured in the performance which was recorded for the big screen, and the cast of the show in London included Jon Jon Briones as The Engineer, Eva Noblezada as Kim and Alistair Brammar as Chris. According to producers, the cast delivered emotional performances so close-ups appear very natural, just like they were being shot for the cinema as opposed to being performed to a packed theatre.
As a result, the musical of Miss Saigon is incredibly cinematic as a theatrical experience, taking into account the score and staging too. There were also some additional covering shots filmed in January 2016 to be added to the cinema release.