Miss Saigon: Review

Tickets for the upcoming run of Miss Saigon at the Palace Theatre, Manchester (4-8 August 2026) went on sale today, Friday 14 November 2025, following the stunning success of the current tour. If you intend to go, hurry up and get a ticket. I’m sad at the price of things, but more than anything at the price of theatre tickets. But this production is the strongest version of the show the UK has seen in years. It’s worth it, seriously. They give it absolutely everything.

Created by Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schönberg, with lyrics by Boublil and Richard Maltby Jr., Miss Saigon reimagines Puccini’s Madama Butterfly – shifting the action to Vietnam during the final days of the war and the fall of Saigon in 1975. Over the decades it has attracted both acclaim and controversy, but this production steers closer to emotional and political clarity than most. It gives the story a contemporary resonance without sacrificing its operatic scale.

I felt privileged to see what I believe to be one of the best casts in any show I have ever seen. Seann Miley Moore’s Engineer is nothing short of a revelation. I cannot say enough about this performance. Moore brings swagger, danger, needle-sharp timing and a charisma that shimmers between comedy and horror. It’s the kind of performance you feel lucky to witness, and now I can say ‘I saw them play the Engineer in Manchester, I was there to see who I believed, would turn out to be a legend’.

There has been some criticism of shaving down the production meaning less impact. I would disagree. For instance – the use of animation and projected design by George Reeve is a strong asset to this production. The exodus from Saigon to Bangkok – the boat on the ocean, the wash of light, the echo of past horrors meeting the refugee crises of today – lands with astonishing force. The visuals melt into the story in a way that deepens the emotional ocean rather than floating an idea of it. For me, compromising on aspects that were spectacle in earlier productions, allows for a big cast, and that is what I appreciate. That’s work for more people in a difficult industry. I believe, the cuts are in the right place. And nothing is budget about this production.

Jack Kane’s Chris is played with precision, and this staging allows something I’ve wanted to see the last time but it didn’t quite reach. Kane gives us a Chris who carries the horror of war and the guilt of his choices. His relationship with Kim feels, here, like something he used to decorate his trauma – a connection he couldn’t maintain and a responsibility he didn’t fully own. There’s a sense he could have done more. It exposes the self-serving and his terrible experiences taking effect on his choices, in a way that feels closer to the truth of what a soldier experiences.

Opposite him, Julianne Pundan’s Kim is extraordinary. She is utterly believable from her first moment to her last: steadfast, tender, fierce, doomed. Pundan’s voice and emotional truths are the heart of the entire show. You cannot look away from her. She embodies brave love and the devastation, the demolition of a true heart in a terrible war.

And then there’s Moore’s Engineer again – because he truly holds the centre. What makes the character fascinating is his honesty: he is openly self-serving, openly sleazy, openly opportunistic. Chris hides behind the myth of being morally torn. Ellen hides behind middle-class Western righteousness. The Engineer hides nothing. So when Moore tears into “The American Dream,” the audience erupts. The number becomes a glittering, rotten masterpiece – a beautiful bitch of a sequence where satire, violence, patriotism and fantasy merge into something unforgettable. He lifts the embroidered silken veil of Vietnam and shows the blood beneath it; the dreams of America become stripes and sequins stuck to a desperate fool. It’s mesmerising, horrifying, exhilarating.

The tragedy of Miss Saigon endures because no one escapes unscathed. The score remains one of the strongest ever written for musical theatre. The book – when handled with clarity instead of varnish – exposes the truth that men can go blindly into war, devastate lives, misunderstand everything, and then move on. This production edges closer to that truth than most. It is harrowing. It is spectacular. And it is, without question, worth seeing. I feel I can speak for future audiences of this production when I say – this is theatre at its best.

Miss Saigon is at The Palace Theatre, Manchester from 4-15 November 2025.