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  • Adaptation Displacement: Musical theatre fans sometimes don't realise that this is a Setting Update of Madame Butterfly.
  • Americans Hate Tingle: People on both sides of the war (refugees/immigrants and mainlanders) have criticized the show. Most of the criticism revolves around the portrayal of Vietnam being a Wretched Hive, the sexism, and racism (Orientalism). Refugees and immigrants dislike the exploitation of their personal and communal trauma. Mainlanders object to the portrayal of the communists as a sweeping, evil army (for example, the comparison of Ho Chi Minh note  to Big Brother during "Morning of the Dragon"). It's also plagued with an extensive amount of errors regarding the Vietnamese culture and language, as well as allegations of Interchangeable Asian Cultures in the lack of Vietnamese actors in principal roles (the original Broadway/West End Engineer, Jonathan Pryce, is a white man wearing Yellowface to play an Eurasian character, and the most notable principal Kims have been Filipina Lea Salonga and Filipina Mexican Eva Noblezada).
  • Alternate Aesop Interpretation: The entire musical can be seen as a metaphor for the relations between the West and developing countries. The West (Chris) promises a better life to the developing countries (Kim and the Engineer) only to end up abandoning them (either willfully or after being forced to do so).
  • Alternative Character Interpretation: Did Thuy want to kill Tam because of who his father was... or because Tam was a reminder that someone else took Kim's virginity?
    • As noted in the revival, the new characterization of Thuy is much more sympathetic than the original, for good reason. Kim is explicitly the only family Thuy has left after a war he's been fighting in, so it's easy to wonder if his Disproportionate Retribution of trying to kill Tam might be because like Chris, he's suffering unknown/untreated PTSD and making terrible decisions because of it. But thanks to the original story's racism, Thuy didn't get any sympathy for it.
    • Asian-Americans have also noted that Thuy is suffering a major case of being the Designated Villain, since none of his choices are actually "good". From his perspective, his fiancee got forced into prostitution and had sex with an American soldier. After the Fall of Saigon, she waits a whole year naively thinking that Chris is COMING BACK FOR HER, so Thuy is most likely trying to tell her that This Is Reality and there are plenty of half-white and fatherless children running around. When Thuy tries to separate Kim from her "true love," he's seen as an uptight, repressed Asian stereotype... but if he rejected her as "damaged goods", it's likely that the writers would still have portrayed him as an uptight and repressed Asian stereotype, just for different reasons.
  • Award Snub: The original production failing to win Best Musical (though it did garner acting awards for Lea Salonga, Jonathan Pryce, and Hinton Battle) and the revival not winning for Best Revival or anything else. Granted, the revival was up against the hugely acclaimed revivals of Hello, Dolly! and Falsettos.
  • Awesome Music: This musical has some phenomenal songs. One of the most loved is "The Movie in My Mind", a duet between Kim and the otherwise minor character of Gigi; this gala performance of the song, with Lea Salonga (the original Kim) and Rachelle Ann Go (the revival's original Gigi), is absolutely stunning, to the point that Lea can be seen squeeing over Rachelle Ann's incredible voice.
  • Can't Un-Hear It:
    • Lea Salonga as Kim. Helped by how many times she reprised the role over the years even when she was in her thirties.
    • Despite, or perhaps even aided by his controversial casting, Jonathan Pryce certainly made his mark on The Engineer as well.
  • Ensemble Dark Horse: John, to a degree, for going through the most amount of character development. He's quite the jerk in the opening bar scene and a cold pragmatist during the rest of Act One (and "The Fall of Saigon"), whereas by Act Two he's working hard to help the bui-doi children, shows a great deal of kindness and sympathy towards Kim and (still pragmatic as ever) objects a great deal to Chris and Ellen's carefree attitude towards solving the Tam/Kim situation by simply providing monetary support. He's basically the moral compass of the second act, and several fans greatly appreciate him for it.
  • Fridge Horror:
    • If you think Chris was going through hell before—having nightmares/grappling with his troubled marriage/struggling with guilt over inadvertently abandoning Kim—what's he going to be like now? Especially bad considering that he was making strides towards putting his life together.
    • It's not just him: consider what Tam's life is going to be like. His mother had to kill herself to force his father to take him and raise him in America, his stepmother flat-out doesn't want him, and he probably won't have any memory of his real mother at all. And even though things were bad for bui doi in Vietnam (case in point: Thuy trying to stab Tam for existing), America wasn't exactly free of Half-Breed Discrimination at the time either. This kid's most likely got a rough life ahead of him.
      • At least in the 25th anniversary version of the show Ellen says she has no problem with the idea of raising Tam, it's the fact that he comes with a mother who loves Ellen's husband that makes her object. As the show ends she holds her stepson in her arms and seems to want to protect him.
  • Heartwarming in Hindsight: Lea Salonga auditioned by singing "On My Own" from Les Misérables. After Miss Saigon brought her fame, she became the first Asian actress to play the role of Eponine.
  • Hilarious in Hindsight: Jonathan Pryce originated the role of the Engineer, whose most memorable moment is probably the song "The American Dream". Twenty years later in GI Joe The Rise Of Cobra, Pryce played the American President, which is probably the ultimate American dream, fulfilled.
  • Jerkass Woobie: The Engineer is as scummy as they come, but much like the other Vietnamese, his life is far from enviable. He's also implied to have faced discrimination over his mixed race, and we can tell from his backstory that he wound up the way he is partially because he needed to do anything he could to survive in his rough, fatherless upbringing. His dream of America is also strangely pitiful. He makes it clear he'll continue to be a reprehensible individual if he makes it there, but given his awful surroundings, it's easy to understand why he wants to ditch his current home for something better. Also sad is how he's lead to believe he'll finally have his dream come true only to shortly have it crushed.
  • Just Here for Godzilla: The makers of the musical realized early on that the helicopter sequence was a huge selling point, so much so that the helicopter is the musical's logo on posters and promotional material.
  • Love to Hate: The Engineer is shameless and skeevy, but his charm is undeniable, as is his ability to walk away with the show. His popularity is large enough that many viewers mourn him being unable to go to America, even though he makes it clear he'll just be a bigger Slime Ball there.
  • Narm:
    • The character of Chris due to being written so melodramatically. A good actor will usually be able to avert this but with a bad actor this will almost certainly happen. Special mention to his Big "NO!" at the end.
    • Kim's "I have a heart like the sea/ A million dreams are in me" bit falls squarely into this territory, although most soldiers but Chris seem to realize it.
    • In the 25th anniversary performance, AKA the one available on DVD, the scene where Chris leads Ellen off stage to tell her about Kim has him uttering a dramatic "fuck" under his breath, which manages to come off hilarious and out of place.
    • Chris also gets a narmy line in, which most productions have John lampshade.
      Chris: She is no whore. You saw her, too. She's really more - like the April moon.
      John: April fucking moon?
  • Narm Charm: The musical can fall prey to this trope yet it's still utterly fantastic, watchable and will probably have you sobbing at the end. Chris is sometimes the most/only narmy one, especially during the song "Why, God, Why?"; even its title sounds narmy. It also depends on how well he can pull off that Big "NO!" at the end. Some actors are terrific, others have you stifling your laughter or even cringing.
  • Nightmare Fuel: When Thuy finds Kim, he sings a touching song to the one family member he has left in his life and has spent the last three years searching for. But when he finds out about Tam? That goes right out the window and he prepares to stab Tam, an innocent little boy whose only crime was to have an American father.
  • Questionable Casting: Given it's not always the easiest process getting West End actors over to Broadway, some questioned the decision to make that move for Alistair Brammer as Chris in the revival, as he was neither a big name nor giving a particularly well received performance, unlike fellow major cast members Eva Noblezada (Kim), Jon Jon Briones (the Engineer), and Rachelle Ann Go (Gigi), who weren't famous, but had been acclaimed for their work in London.
  • The Scrappy: It's hard to find a fan of the show who doesn't hate Ellen, seeing her as the reason Chris and Kim can't reunite and why Chris isn't willing to take Tam (his and Kim's son) back to America with him. There's also the timing problem with her marriage to Chris - he's been back Stateside 3 years, one of which was taken up by his Heroic BSoD ("spoke to no one for a year",) and they've been married 2 years. When exactly did they date?
  • Signature Scene: The helicopter.
  • Signature Song: "The American Dream"
  • Values Dissonance: While the play's portrayals of Southern Vietnamese is sympathetic and getting visually more accurate in later runs, its depiction of the victorious communists indulges in great artistic license:
    • Having communist guerrilas parading in straw hats, in addition to everything that trope implies, furthers the narration of the war as "Vietnamese peasants vs American soldiers" which is an oversimplification.note  The more realistic headgear would be the the boonie hat which would appear eerily familiar to people who witnessed actual Vietnamese military parades. Compare the actual victorious march in 1975.
    • The parade has performers wearing masks that loosely resemble Uncle Sam. However, under low light, those masks, which have attached ribbons and just a front instead of a full top hat, from afar look more like a caricature version of the traditional head gear of Hung Kings, the mythical ancestors revered by both sides of Vietnam during the war.note 
    • The "American evils" then get "expelled" by valiant Vietnamese martial artists. However, in reality the former South hailed a more prominent martial tradition than the North.note 
    • The parade continues with ribbon waver wearing half masks of a man, presumably Ho Chi Minh. It looks more like they are ''mocking' the man rather than venerating him.
  • The Woobie: Several of them in the main cast.
    • Kim: she is separated from the man she loves, waiting faithfully for three years for Chris to return while raising their son Tam, only to find that he has remarried after thinking her dead. She resorts to suicide to force him to take Tam back to America.
    • Chris: he is forced by the evacuation to leave Kim against his will, and becomes a Shell-Shocked Veteran with a bad case of Survivor Guilt and recurring nightmares. By the time he re-unites with Kim (whom he has until recently thought dead), she has shot herself and dies in his arms.
    • Ellen, to some extent: every night she comforts her husband when he wakes up with nightmares, and two years into her marriage, finds that he has had a child with another woman.
    • Tam: he will most likely never remember his mother after she killed herself when he was only two, and he will now have to grow up in America as a half-Asian with two white parents at a time when prejudice against mixed-race families was prevalent.

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