CAMERON MACKINTOSH has no qualms admitting that the business he is in has changed. 'It's harder to fill seats, big shows are very expensive to run,' he says in his office on Broadway. It is only a stone's throw from Broadway Theatre, where one of his most successful shows, Miss Saigon, has performed for a decade. The show will close permanently in January. 'I think 10 years is a good run, as soon as we announced the closing there was a resurgence of interest, and I want the show to go out as strongly as it came in.' But Mackintosh doesn't dwell on the past. 'The shows I do are the equivalent of operas like Carmen, they will be done again and again,' he says.
And so Hong Kong, like the rest of Asia, eagerly welcomes the last of the Broadway 'big four'. Following the successes of Cats, Phantom Of The Opera and Les Miserables, Miss Saigon, perhaps the only large Broadway production featuring predominantly Asian performers, is finally having its day on its home turf. In addition to the roughly two-month long engagement in Hong Kong, Miss Saigon is also being performed in other countries in the region such as the Philippines and Singapore.
Asian and European tours are proving to be successful business opportunities for producer Mackintosh, 55, who, besides being known as an artistic wizard, is equally adept at managing the business he is in. Although entertainment giants like Disney are moving in for a piece of the pie, with extravagant stage versions of Beauty And The Beast and Aida, Mackintosh feels it will be hard to duplicate the financial success of the 'big four'.
'People try to copy me but they can't make money,' he says. 'Miss Saigon cost me US$4 million to US$5 million [HK$31-$39 million] to produce, many of the big shows today cost well over US$10 million, but the profit hasn't gone up.'
Hong Kong audiences will get something well worth their HK$695 ticket. An undertaking on a grand scale, Hong Kong's production of Miss Saigon will have all the fervour and flavour of the original spectacle - a real helicopter landing, a cast of close to 50 - served with the timeless storyline of love unrequited. Lovers Kim and Chris, a Vietnamese girl and an American GI, are separated by the atrocities of war. However, set during the fall of Saigon in 1975, the message is more vivid for Asians.
'We really entered into uncharted territory with Miss Saigon, because it was very hard to find Asian performers in England,' says Mackintosh. The show first premiered in London's West End in 1985 before going to Broadway. 'We set up a training school and went around the world, to New York, Honolulu, Manila, Singapore and Taipei, in search of the cast,' he says. Miss Saigon became the Broadway nurturer of Asian talent. Lea Salonga, the Filipino actress/singer who played the original Kim, won a Sir Laurence Olivier award and is reprising her role in the current Manila production.
Hong Kong's own Miss Saigon is a star in her own right. Playing the part of Kim is American-Filipino singer/actress Deedee Lynn Magno, a bubbly and vivacious 26-year-old trained in the same camp as pop sensation Britney Spears, the Mickey Mouse Club. Magno has played the tragic heroine on Broadway and with the touring company for nearly five years.