I never would have thought that a 6 foot Irish dude could pull off the role of a half Vietnamese-half French brothel owner. But here he is doing just that. Micheal O’Hara plays the role of “the Engineer,” a streetwise, go-go club schemer, in Tacoma Musical Playhouse’s staging of Miss Saigon. His performance was amazing. Not only does he have a set of pipes that is the sort musical legends are made of, but his nuanced acting style deserves accolades as well. O’Hara is simply a complete package. He becomes the people he portrays. And he is a heck of a nice guy too.



This show would have been a treat just with his performance, but the serving of talent goes well beyond what O’Hara brings to the table.



Other standouts include the equally talented Aaron Freed in the role of Chris the Marine sergeant, who falls in love with an orphan-turned bar girl in the twilight days of the Vietnam War in 1975.



Miss Saigon is a retelling of Giacomo Puccini’s opera Madame Butterfly. This story has the tale of tragic lovers torn apart by war and conditions beyond their control set in Saigon as America makes its exit stage left after more than a decade of drawn-out fighting.



Broadway folklore holds that the show was written after Claude-Michel Schönberg inadvertently saw a photograph in a magazine that showed a woman saying good-bye to her child at a departure gate at an American airbase. She was to stay behind and try to survive as the Communists took control of the country while her child would most certainly face a better life in the United States, where the girl would be raised by her father, who was an American soldier.

Schönberg considered this mother’s selfless actions for her child to be “The Ultimate Sacrifice,” a central theme of the plot of Miss Saigon. The play, however, takes that theme into a darker place than just tearful good-byes in an airport.



The show’s numerous signature numbers include “Heat is on in Saigon,” where American GIs and Vietnamese bargirls hold one last party before the city is overrun by the victory parade as Communist soldiers enter the city, and “The American Dream,” a flashy number about making money.



TMP worked out a clever way to solve one of the large production scenes the show is known far. The scene with the last Americans leaving the city by helicopter is a well-known moment of that show since it often includes a full-scale helicopter landing on the stage. TMP’s former vaudeville stage is too small for such theatrics, however, but it did manage to handle a rope ladder falling from the catwalk to allow actors to climb up far enough to be out of sight as the South Vietnamese civilians shout about being left behind by a country that vowed to protect them against the Communist North.



Not only is this a show well worth seeing, but it is one that is worth seeing again. I’d love to see it again at least once if only there were tickets available. Empty seats at TMP are few and far between these days, and there is good reason for that. Shows like this make empty seats a crime against the arts, not just missed opportunities. This show is really that good.



There were a few sour notes in the show, however. The balance was off a few times, and the microphones tripped off occasionally. Some voices were better than others, but the good notes far outweighed the bad in this production.



[Narrows Theatre, Miss Saigon, through May 4, 8 p.m. Friday-Saturday, 2 p.m. Sunday, additional matinees at 2 p.m. Saturday, April 26 and May 3, $16-$23, 7116 Sixth Ave., Tacoma, 253.565.6867, www.tmp.org]