Broadway Babylon (39 page)

Jonathan Pryce, known to UK audiences for local film roles (he was later miscast in the movie of
Evita
), had almost starred in
The Phantom of the Opera
and was a trained singer. He was cast as the Eurasian “Engineer,” so-called because he makes things go. The character’s “slithering choreography,” devised by Bob Avian—Michael Bennett’s longtime friend and collaborator—and Pryce, failed to generate much comment in London but would in New York, where
Miss Saigon
made theatrical history with advance ticket sales of over $26 million. Despite—or perhaps in part as a result of—Mackintosh’s announcing new ticket prices at an all-time high of $100—$40 higher than for rival shows.

The British Invasion was clearly in full swing, setting the stage for major controversy. Local media charged Mackintosh with “manipulation.” He retorted, “The theater is
about
manipulation.” Jonathan Pryce’s East Asian eyepieces
surely weren’t going to be used on an American stage? (They weren’t.) At least one reporter recycled composer Schöenberg’s comment that the Engineer “must be like a sneaky little Oriental mouse,” and the enormous Ho Chi Minh statue in
Miss Saigon
was a potential sore point that hadn’t resonated in London, but in the United States would remind audiences of America’s military non-victory.

T
HE
N
EW
Y
ORK OPENING
was scheduled for April 1991, but Jonathan Pryce, still performing in Britain, hadn’t been officially announced for the Broadway run. However, the role was his if he wanted it, according to producer Mackintosh and director Nicholas Hytner—both openly gay men, that openness rarer in the American than British theater. (Hytner directed the acclaimed film of the play
The Madness of George III
.) Once it got out that Pryce, little known beyond the UK, had a virtual lock on the role he’d created, some members of American Actors’ Equity Association decided to publicize the fact that the starring part was not open to audition.

A flier distributed in Manhattan cited the habitual practice of giving larger Oriental roles—though in this case a Eurasian—to Caucasian actors, stars or not. “This is the same old story of the same old stories devised by European and American men who depict Asian women as disposable sex objects, use Asian settings only as places to flee from, and portray Asian men as villains or buffoons.… As usual, feminine Asian characters are cast for beauty and flesh, while masculine Asian characters—represented as not exactly masculine—are predominantly cast with Caucasian actors. Yet again, Western men demonstrate their discomfort with and contempt for Oriental males.”

The charges were difficult to refute (and the Brits scarcely tried). The crucial pimp was written as only half Vietnamese, to diminish his “otherness” and make him more “accessible” to UK and U.S. audiences. And yet the Engineer remains apart from the story’s emotionally affective core. Almost invariably, Western entertainments featuring an East Asian theme dwell on an Oriental female—who inevitably comes under the sway of an Occidental male.

In June 1990, three months before final casting decisions would be made, a petition from the Pan Asian Repertory Theatre denouncing
Miss Saigon’s
casting hit the news. It stated, “With this action, Equity is sending the following message to its minority members: we will support your right to work so long as your role is not central to the play.”

Twelve days later, B.D. Wong, star of
M. Butterfly
(which co-producer Stuart Ostrow felt had been depoliticized by supposedly more commercially minded co-producer David Geffen), wrote to AEA President Colleen Dewhurst to enlist her support “on an issue of racism” and to oppose “a practice
I thought was dying.” Wong urged Equity members of East Asian descent to join the protest, offering them a form letter to sign. Dewhurst took his side, but the emphasis was on the pending importation of Caucasian non-star Jonathan Pryce, rather than the wider casting issue.

Wong publicly enthused, “Chances to nail the big guys like this don’t come often. Let’s do it.” The comment indicated why the protest gained so much support so quickly: it was Broadway battling the Brits, fueled by more than a little jealousy over such giant successes as
Evita, Cats, Phantom
, and
Les Miz
.

As often happens with controversial movies,
Miss Saigon
elicited criticism from people who hadn’t seen it. One AEA member claimed that Pryce performed in London while “painted yellow,” with “taped slit eyes, fake bushy eyebrows, and a wig.” In truth, Pyrce didn’t wear a wig nor enhance his eyebrows; he employed a Clinique bronzing lotion, and as the protestor should have known, “yellow” is a stereotypical misnomer.

Cameron Mackintosh had to reconsider whether a picketed, media-targeted American production of
Miss Saigon
would be worth it. On the face of $26 million, it would, but British producers were aware how stateside controversy could cut even deeper than dollars. The racial, if not the color, issue was just one aspect—the “fall of Saigon,” pregnant bar girls left behind, the towering Ho Chi Minh statue, etcetera, might provoke the type of self-righteousness that had kept major Hollywood filmmakers from treating the Vietnam War for a decade after its end, and then frequently trying to rewrite history in a more gung ho, Rambo-esque way.

A London theater editorial recalled the “limited yet media-intensive protest” versus the 1977
Nefertiti
, which resulted in its closing en route to Broadway. Protestors had objected to the casting of Andrea Marcovicci, even though Nefertiti was “demonstrably not black—
vide
her world-famous bust in the Berlin museum—although U.S. pickets chose to insist that she was,” said the editorial.

Cameron Mackintosh was widely expected to back down, what with the $26 million, a belligerent press, and many AEA protesters of color allying themselves with B.D. Wong and company. Rather, Mackintosh stunned Broadway by taking an ad in the
New York Times
to announce
Miss Saigon
’s cancelation. He attacked the opposition to his casting of Pryce, deeming it virtual blackmail and opining that it could lead to casting by quota or via the dictates of actors’ unions. Part of the problem was local contention that Pryce wasn’t a star and thus was not entitled to take a role that an American actor could perform. Yet
Miss Saigon
in London had elevated Pryce to at least semi-stardom, and insiders believed that if Mackintosh had taken the issue to arbitration, he would have won his point.

“Cameron didn’t want to have to win that way,” offered an anonymous associate. “He wanted to win on his own terms, unbeholden to any union, American organization, or special-interest group.”

Amazed by the virulence of the protestors and how readily the mainstream Actors’ Equity Association had gotten behind them, Mackintosh fumed in a press statement, “Racial prejudice does seem to have triumphed over creative freedom. A sad statement on the current state of the arts in America.”

The national media soon weighed in on Mackintosh’s headline-grabbing move. Unlike much of the New York media, it generally sided with
Miss Saigon
and the big business it represented. The potential AEA ban on Pryce also threatened international cultural relationships—the general secretary of British Equity denounced its stand, declaring that had Pryce been an American, American Equity wouldn’t have been able to prevent his being cast, which “offends us.” Besides which, Cameron Mackintosh was easily, at that point, the biggest employer of Broadway actors and technicians!

A
FTER AMAZEMENT AT HIS BOLDNESS
subsided, Broadway wondered how much of the $26 million refund would spill over to their own shows? British theater columnist Mark Steyn later pointed out what Broadway analysts quickly realized: that most of the refund “would have gone nowhere near the theatre. Had
Miss Saigon
not opened, many of the customers would simply have put their refunds towards a week in Florida or sheet-rocking the garage or enlisting the kids in a drug rehab programme.”

The Great White Way concluded that if
Miss Saigon
pulled out before it even started, the loss to Broadway, short- and long-term, would be greater than to Cameron Mackintosh and the musicalizing Europeans. Within days, American Equity reversed itself. Pressure was put on B.D. Wong and others to keep silent for the greater good of Broadway. Jonathan Pryce did “qualify as a star,” and the AEA wished “Cameron Mackintosh’s production of
Miss Saigon
a long and prosperous run.”

The producer delayed his response for several days. He unexpectedly asserted that the show would not go on without Equity’s guarantee that members wouldn’t campaign against the show, and that all casting and production matters were solely within his jurisdiction—sans criticism. He insisted upon “a positive working environment” and no further press “leaks” that might start the ball of controversy rolling all over again.

Mackintosh got what he wanted, and auditions for unfilled roles in the Broadway production commenced in October 1990.

Miss Saigon
became
the
theater sensation of 1991, and its much-ballyhooed (and derided) helicopter replaced the former casting crisis as a topic of conversation. The musical’s run—just under a decade in New York, just over a
decade in London—didn’t match that of, say,
Phantom
or
Les Miz
(nor did the number of non-English-language versions). More difficult and expensive to produce and cast, and despite its re-pedaled love story,
Miss Saigon
was and is nowhere as universal, relevant, or lastingly appealing as other musical imports, though ironically this one was, or seemed to be, the most American of the bunch.

U.S. director-lyricist Richard Maltby Jr. had predicted, “When
Miss Saigon
opens in New York, there’s going to be a great sense of pain. This is the kind of show American musicals became great on, a popular entertainment on the major American event of contemporary history.
We
should have looked at ourselves in this way. There’ll be a lot of sniffing on Broadway, but in the end a great sadness: this is the show
we
should have written.”

P.S. Ironically, the controversy over the casting of this production may have helped it at Tony time. Jonathan Pryce won for Best Actor in a Musical (not his first Tony; he’d won one in 1977 for
Comedians
), and Lea Salonga and Hinton Battle also took home awards.

I
magine a musical of
Sunset Boulevard
starring … Gloria Swanson. In 1957, producer Hal Prince telephoned the movie star about the possibility after seeing her on Steve Allen’s TV show. She’d already declared, after a humiliating Broadway flop, that she would never return to the stage unless somebody wrote a musical of her classic 1950 screen vehicle.

In 1961,
Variety
announced that Prince had obtained musical rights to the movie, and the project would hit the Great White Way in 1962 starring … Jeanette MacDonald (Stephen Sondheim would co-write). Prince envisioned the casting gimmick of MacDonald’s on-screen-only romantic partner Nelson Eddy as Max. After the singing diva died in 1965, the project sat on the shelf.

In 1980, Angela Lansbury let it be known that after
Sweeney Todd
she would do the
Sunset Boulevard
musical. Meanwhile, Prince’s and Sondheim’s
Follies
(1971) had been directly inspired by a famous photo of Gloria Swanson, survivor supreme (born 1899), standing amid the ruins of the Roxy Theatre.

In 1990,
Variety
wondered, “A Musical Version of
Sunset Boulevard
? Andrew Lloyd Webber Is Ready, Mr. DeMille.” In 1991 the
New York Daily News
heralded that “Kathryn Grayson, the great MGM singing star of yesteryear, is said to be first in line for the Gloria Swanson role.… Sources say she’s prepared to lose a lot of weight and get nipped and tucked by a plastic surgeon as soon as the offer is firm.” The next year,
Variety
noted, “Meryl Streep, Patti LuPone said to be neck and neck for Norma in the musical.” In 1979 the Latin
LuPone had copped the coveted lead in
Evita
from the Nordic Streep who in any case soon left her theater roots behind to follow her movie career (although she has recently returned to the theater in several highly praised performances, including the starring role in the Public Theater’s 2006 production of
Mother Courage and Her Children
).

As Meryl’s box-office stock climbed, rumors proliferated that producer-director Prince had changed his mind and would replace Patti between
Evita
’s California opening and its Broadway run. Further rumor had it that the rumors had been planted by Hal himself. LuPone told the press, “I’ve never had doubts about my talents and how I affect an audience. I’ve been taught to have doubts by directors and producers and critics.” She played Eva Peron triumphantly until leaving the show in 1981.