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Cameron Mackintosh Plots ‘Miss Saigon’ Return to London in 2014

Cameron Mackintosh Plots ‘Miss Saigon’ Return to London in 2014

Cameron Mackintosh will restage “Miss Saigon” in London in 2014.

“I’m going to restage Miss Saigon in London as soon as I find a theatre” Mackintosh recently told the Philippine Times. “We have started preliminary auditions.”

The news comes 25 years after the Claude-Michel Schonberg and Alain Boublil musical about the Vietnam War was staged the first time.

“When we did the show in London 25 years ago, we spent over a year looking for the cast,” Mackintosh continued. “I hope that in the next 18 months it would be back in London. The new version has just opened here in Japan, and it’s a phenomenal success. It’s going to be a different production, but the same great Miss Saigon.”

The original casting found Lea Salonga, who was just 18 at the time and went on to win the Tony Award and the Olivier Award for her performance as Kim in the musical. The original West End production in London ran for 10 years and played 4,264 performances, the longest performance ever at Theatre Royal, Drury Lane in London. The Broadway version opened in 1991 and won 10 Tony Awards.

Mackintosh also revealed that a film version of “Miss Saigon” also could be a possibility, though he is waiting to see how the upcoming film adaptation of “Les Miserables” performs at the box office.

“It’s possible,” he said of a possible film. “But we will have to wait and see how successful ‘Les Mis’ will be as a film.”

As far as casting for the musical goes, music supervisor Stephen Brooker says the choice is complicated.

“We’re potentially looking for a lot of people because Cameron Mackintosh has a lot of different projects,” Brooker said. “For instance, ‘Miss Saigon’ would need to have three Kims in it (because of vacation schedules): We’re looking for the main actor, also the first understudy, and the second understudy. The same applies to all the lead characters.”