No more MISS SAIGON... — Page 4

Philip Kan Gotanda's play "Yankee Dawg You Die" is over 30 years old but still relevant. Of necessity, it is a play for the 1980s as one character had to have performed in the films of the 1940s.

I saw the world premiere in 1987 at Berkeley Rep. This is a review of the 1988 Chicago production. Yankee Dawg You Die

LizzieCurry said: "No, but when it's very few Asian-centric shows offered at all, then it skews people's views. If you've only gotten to eat oranges out of season, you might KNOW intellectually there are better ones out there, but you've never had one, you might need convincing that they actually can taste good, andyou're not likely to try another."

You can't attribute the lack of Asian-centric shows on Miss Saigon or The King and I. Those shows are telling very specific stories. How can you make the authors responsible for not telling a story?

As some on this board may know, I loved Miss Saigon for years and it was my favorite show. I read a lot of the criticism of it and felt that the show still had its merits. Now that I am older, it's been harder for me to deny its more problematic elements. Sure, it has some beautiful things to it and ultimately I think that the message is well-intended, but it's hard to ignore the racism and outdated aspects. I'm not just talking about the orientalist language and sexualization of Asian women, but things like the logo not even matching the Vietnamese language, the Vietnamese lyrics in the show essentially being gibberish until they were rewritten for the US tour, Japanese cultural ideas like bushido being applied to Vietnamese culture like all Asian cultures are the same, etc. When I saw the tour of the revival before COVID hit, I realized that this show will always have a place in my heart, but I have outgrown it. I am ready to move on.

Also, when I saw the tour recently I had this thought: Chris didn't have to sleep with Kim when they first met. Wouldn't it be interesting if the show changed it so that he didn't?

Updated On: 4/30/21 at 01:56 PM