Which do you prefer - Miss Saigon or Les Miserables?

What are your thoughts? These two shows are both sung through completely and are composed by the same person.

I personally prefer Les Miserables. I'd be interested to hear what you think.

thanks

I prefer Les Mis (although I think most people on this board are gonna tell you they hate both).

I love Miss Saigons score, but the subject matter is kind of silly when you think about. A musical about vietnam just somehow doesn't fit.

I wish all the decisions I had to make this week were this easy! HAHA!

No question -- I like EVERYTHING about Les Mis much more than I do Miss Saigon!

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Miss Saigon is more relatable. Too many people die in Les Mis

Miss Saigon has a few great songs but I love Les Miserables.

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"Miss Saigon isn't really about Vietnam; it's just set there."- SporkGoddess


Oookay, I suppose Les Mis has nothing to do with France or the French Revolution, since that's just when it happens to take place.

Don't get me wrong, I've always had a soft spot for Miss Saigon, but I would feel a little guilty seeing it with an audience full of VA war veterans, if you know what I mean.

You see, the musical in someways exploits the tragedy of that war in order to gain sympathy for it's main characters, yet doesn't really even try to represent the reality of the situation (something I think les mis does).

Boublil and Schoenberg seemed to think it was okay to dramatize the setting the same way you would present a musical set during WWII. And while I find several scenes illuminating and beautiful(The Buidoi song, the helicopters leaving from Saigon) I can't say it does the subject matter justice.

There's no comparison really.

Les Miz is pure and heartfelt whereas Miss Saigon is only great if you can forget the subtext beneath it (and even then the music doesn't come close to matching the haunting beauty of Les Mis).

Updated On: 6/27/07 at 10:49 PM

I do not know much about Miss Saigon, but Les Miserables is easily one of the best shows to this date.

Vietnam does pervade the show, but really the story is about the ultimate sacrifice, as the writers put it.

How does it not represent the reality of the situation? It takes place a few days before America pulls out of the war. It shows the wartorn soldiers who are disillusioned. After Saigon falls, it shows the reeducation camps, how many had to hide due to former association with the enemy, and the plight of the boat people. It shows communist propaganda. It shows how desperate people were to leave before the city did fall. It shows what happens to the kids who were the children of Vietnames women and American G.I.'s, and not really accepted. It shows how hard soldiers had adjusting after getting home from the war.

I honestly don't see how it misrepresents the history in which it is set.

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"I honestly don't see how it misrepresents the history in which it is set."

It's not so much a misrepresentation, as much as the tone being all across the board. But then again, maybe I find this harder to stomach simply because our current generation has seen real footage from the Vietnam War whereas people in the 1940's only saw very toned down documentaries of WWII, if anything at all. Therefore my expectation for a level of realism is higher.

When I think of Vietnam, I think of those infamous pictures of young nude girls running from napalm blasts, or the photo of the man being held at gunpoint.

Seeing Jonathan Pryce singing about strippers in brown-ish makeup just felt kind of silly.

I guess in some ways, the whole idea of updating Madame Butterfly to suit Vietnam was more than a little contrived, and the entire show just remains flawed because of that.

I agree with SporkGoddess. I don't think MISS SAIGON exploits the Vietnam war any more than LES MISERABLES exploits a student insurrection. I remember watching the show in 1991 and hearing audience members who were Vietnam vets and they were visibly moved by the show. Many of them commented that what they saw onstage accurately mirrored their lives in Vietnam and after they returned to the States. And I think the passage of time and intervening events (the first Gulf War and this debacle that the U.S. is currently embroiled in come to mind) has allowed American audiences the luxury of perspective and distance from the Vietnam war such that the Vietnam war now truly is the backdrop for MISS SAIGON, as it was always intended to be, rather than the platform by which the show was trying to make a political statement.

That being said, while LES MISERABLES will always hold a special place in my heart as that was the first Broadway show I saw, I prefer MISS SAIGON because it's ultimately an intimate show dressed in the clothes of the big poperas of the late 80's/early 90's. When you think about it, there are only six characters driving the show as opposed to ten or so. I love the score and my favorite passages of music in MISS SAIGON are the recitative portions, which are heard in between the big numbers. Also, I'm a sucker for tragic love stories, and the fact that that is the focus of MISS SAIGON, where LES MISERABLES has it as only one of its many throughlines, wins me over.

Also, MISS SAIGON brought Lea Salonga to the attention of the international artistic community. Her opening MISS SAIGON in the West End and Broadway along with her winning the awards for her role as Kim have done much in terms of instilling pride in Filipinos both here and back home, and encouraged many Asian performers to pursue their dreams to work in the theatre.

I preferred Sommersby, errrr... I mean Martin Guerre to either Miz or Miss.

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Miss Saigon made me cry everytime I saw it, so if we're judging it on that...

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I just didn't care about any of the characters. The love story was thrown together so quickly that it was almost laughable. I hated Chris. Pretty much the only person in the show that I felt any sympathy toward was Ellen, the one person set up to be the "villian" (a la Raoul in Phantom).

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