Review: Miss Saigon

Nina Tapio charms Miss Saigon as Ellen

Boublil-Schoenberg: Miss Saigon. Helsinki City Theatre, large stage. Directed by Georg Malvius, Nina Tapio in the role of Ellen.

Nina Tapio has joined the crew of the Helsinki City Theatre’s Miss Saigon musical. She plays the role of Ellen, the American wife of a US soldier, alternating with Maria Ylipää.

Nina Tapio is charmingly warm, a precise actress with restrained intensity and very clear in terms of the content of the role. You have to be both a woman and in this way on the side of the Vietnamese Kim and the child, and on the other hand, a wife, the breadwinner of her own family.

Nina Tapio is also easy to listen to, especially her soft vocal side. Loud and high-pitched voices are colder, as is the case with all the other singers in the City Theatre performance. I don’t know if it’s the fault in the singing style or maybe in the level of sound technology.

Miss Saigon’s performance has remained well in shape and has been confirmed for many roles since the premiere.

Mika Turunen is incomparably brilliant in his role as a soldier who resembles a nice and innocent neighbor’s son. Jennie Storbacka’s Kim also plays the premiere with a more confident touch, is sensitive, sweet and touchingly tragic. As the musical’s pimp, Sören Lillkung is a glamorous villain and a theatrically but funnily insightful exploiter of circumstances.

The Americans are good at Miss Saigon’s story and the Vietnamese are nasty because they are communists. That is rotten in this concoction now and always, but especially now, when Iraq threatens to become a new Vietnam for the Americans and their comrades-in-arms.