By the way, janesvillean, re: your reference to 1964 etc., when I mentioned the anti-war elements in North Vietnam that were brutalized by war hawk Stalinists, I was referring to the time period of the mid-sixties to the early seventies, which included the time of the major American presence in South Vietnam.

This information came from the research of a Vietnamese-American woman who was given access to the archives of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.

jenny, part of Greg's blog deals with the controversy of having prostitutes portrayed in a high school play. janesvillean made reference to real prostitutes who she somehow identifies with the students who portrayed the prostitutes in the play. Those two ideas might conjure up a question.

Can we please keep this about what it's supposed to be about? VERY talented kids that gave their heart and souls to this show and wanted only to entertain and also to portray history as closely and as accuratley as they could with the assistance of local soldiers who were kind enough to talk to them about what they went through. Bravo to the cast, crew, directors of Miss Saigon.

janesvillean, it is your "history" that is recycled propaganda, or in some cases off-the-mark rehashed opinions and comments. Neither North Vietnam nor South Vietnam ever agreed to that election. That election was a concoction by the French after France no longer held sway in either of the Vietnams. And any success the North would have had in that election would come from terrorism. You must be aware of the fact that migration to the South was many times greater than migration to the North when the two Vietnams were formed. (By the way, Ho Chi Minh's anti-war position was weakened by his acquiescence to the forming of two Vietnams.)

And what you said about the Vietcong is absolutely not true. The VC, or more properly the COSV (Central Office of South Vietnam -and note the designation of separate nationhood) were anti-the large scale war implemented by the war hawks who actually controlled North Vietnam, with Ho as mostly a figure head. The anti-war Northerners wanted to focus national effort on forming a strong economy in the North. Northern development suffered greatly in the hands of the war hawks. The strategy of the war hawks held that the Southern population would rise up with the communists and overthrow the Saigon regime -it never happened- the South Vietnamese people overwhelmingly didn't want communism. And as for how they felt about Americans, they loved us, and still do. Note the exodus in 1975. Big proof of how the North regarded the Southern communists is that after the war, the new regime murdered, imprisoned, or otherwise ostracized their Southern communist comrades.

The days of your "mainstream" history will eventually end, for it the "history" of the tenured radicals in the academy who will eventually fade away. You will someday have to face the fact that anti-American and anti-South Vietnamese attitudes in regard to the war amount to nothing more than support for the terrorist state of North Vietnam. The communists fed on those attitudes. Those attitudes cost many lives. Those attitudes gave South Vietnam over to communist terrorists.

Much of my knowledge about what was going on in North Vietnam during the war comes from their own archives.

gazettefan, that's sort of an ... unusual ... reading of history, given that Eisenhower wrote that in a free election Ho Chi Minh would have been elected in a landslide, and that Kennedy told an aide that the Vietnamese "hate us". The Diem regime was unpopular and repressed the Buddhist population to the point that the US was happy to see it overthrown in a military coup. The Viet Cong, although supplied by the North, was a multi-ideological front and obviously could not have been forced into guerrilla activities by the Communist government in Hanoi. So while many Vietnamese were anti-war, it seems many more, on both sides of the border, were simply against the South Vietnamese government.
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It's actually pretty sad that you would say that, because it sounds like you're recycling wartime propaganda from 1964, rather than applying the lessons of history that are, at this point, considered mainstream interpretations of the events.

Yes...nothing like a bunch of HS students performing a show about war, combat atrocities, prostitutes, pimps, unprotected sex, unplanned pregnancy, murder, and suicide to cheer us up, eh?

While it was overall very well-"executed" (pun intended) and substantially well-cast (those who attended can guess that one!), Miss Saigon is NOT, nor was it ever, a high school show (cut a few words, lines, and scenes - or not), and it should not be treated as such.

But then again, I guess in an internet-saturated culture that tolerates TV shows like Jersey Shore, there is little anymore that is truly taboo at almost any age. So break-a, hmmm..."-leg" (?), kids (but let's leave the Full Monty for the college crowd, PLEASE)!

Janesvillean, Miss Saigon is as much about the Vietnam War and the American troops who fought it as Springtime for Hitler is about World War II Germany and the American troops who fought there.

Maybe someday there will be a Miss Hanoi, but contrary to Miss Saigon it will be a true story about how anti-war elements in North Vietnam were brutalized by a more forceful Stalinist element there.

Yes, there were anti-war elements in North Vietnam who didn't want to wage war against the sovereign nation of South Vietnam. And I suspect that during the war, dance and song and unrealistic love stories between Chinese and Russian personnel and native Vietnamese were not commonplace in the North.

None of this is to slight Parker's production of Miss Saigon which I'm sure was fine. By the way, I saw a production of it at the Armory.

Miss Saigon was an amazing display of talent! Parker shows have a long-running track record of excellence....Happy Days, Grease, Phantom Of The Opera, and now Miss Saigon - they've all been phenomenal.

It's nice to hear the dramatic arts are thriving in my old hometown. I remember back in the stone age when I attended Janesville Senior High, the art students worked on the sets for the productions. I committed an unpardonable sin by not spelling the word Buffalo correctly on the train car set in Annie Get Your Gun! . Needless to say I heard about it. I support Parker in their attempts at offering more relevant material along with the traditional pieces.

Or Milton...

Next weekend, Milton High School will be presenting "A Christmas Carol"

Performances are on Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday.

I found it quite poignant that the bar girls were portrayed by high-school students, reminding everyone that the real bar girls were also someone's daughter. Still, that's only shown at a PG-13 level, not much that is actually shocking.
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The storyline is a symbolic treatment of the Vietnam War, and a challenging attempt to tell a human story (a reworking of Madame Butterfly) amid the epic spectacle of war. At the same time there isn't much in the story about, for instance, the overall experience of combat troops, so I have to wonder what some of the veterans made of it. I know that my seatmate, wearing veteran's paraphernalia, seemed confused at times and uninterested at others. Even though it became one of the longest-running Broadway productions, it was fairly controversial when it came out, and it was unexpected to see it treated as a sort of tribute to veterans timed for Veterans Day -- because they didn't feel that way about it in the beginning.
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A note about the production. As the student edition it seemed to cut at least one major production number and a couple of minor characters, and probably about an hour of running time. Still, given the limitations of a high school facility, the overall effect was superb (I do wonder whether the helicopter sequence used auxiliary concert-sized speakers, though!). I think it's a credit to Janesville that we can see theatre of this caliber.