If theater were to excise from its canon every problematic work of art — every play espousing racism, sexism, nationalism or some other nefarious belief — we’d not only have a paltry repertoire, we’d also rob ourselves of the chance to learn from our classics’ failures.

But not every work of art deserves to be in wide circulation forever. My review of SHN’s “Miss Saigon,” which adapts the opera “Madama Butterfly” to musical theater and the Vietnam War, broached that issue. It asserted that we should close the book on its show, given its white savior and Orientalist stereotypes, compounded by shallow characters and inane dialogue. Given reader response, we decided to invite local Asian American theater directors Jeffrey Lo and Nikki Meñez to discuss whether “Miss Saigon” is so flawed that it shouldn’t be produced anymore. Lo, casting director at TheatreWorks, is next helming “Between Riverside and Crazy” at San Jose Stage; Meñez, the program manager of New Conservatory Theatre Center’s YouthAware program, is directing “In the Heights” at Custom Made Theatre Company.

Lo and Meñez have complex histories with “Miss Saigon.” As Filipino Americans, they both describe Lea Salonga’s success in the premiere as an accomplishment they were taught to take pride in. For their parents’ generation, “Miss Saigon” was one of the only chances to see actors who looked like them on stage. For decades of Asian American performers, “Miss Saigon” has represented one of the only chances to get steady work or a big break.

Lo and his mother saw Broadway by the Bay’s 2016 production of the show. While it made him feel “really uncomfortable,” Lo recalls his mother saying, “Things like this do happen to people sometimes. A lot of people will make these remarkable and huge sacrifices and do things that defy logic to come to America.” Because Lo’s mother emigrated from the Philippines, he thought, “‘Who am I to disregard that opinion?’ … I can have a differing opinion, but it made me realize that I couldn’t just blow off the musical the way I was really prepared to. But at the same time, although my mom has a cultural competency to that story, the writers” — two white men — “certainly didn’t.”

“Miss Saigon” was Meñez’s introduction to musical theater. When she began taking voice lessons at age 11, “the first thing I learned was most of Kim’s songs from Act 1 of ‘Miss Saigon.’ … The fact that I’ve been inundated with this narrative since before I could even be cognizant of theater as an art form is a big part of why … I am where I am in terms of being a director and being so focused on representation and sincerity when it comes to culturally specific stories and the struggle that I had to come back into performing arts after that experience.”

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Q: What exactly are some of the stereotypes in the musical?

NM: When Kim is introduced to Dreamland brothel. … I’m sure that villagers going to Saigon and seeing sex work as their only option was definitely a truth that happened in the history of the fall of Saigon. But the way that they interact with each other, and the stakes that they have in the brothel … it doesn’t really express that they’re there to do a job and that they are stories and histories as opposed to just feminized and fetishized bodies.

JL: Chris (an American G.I.) was just so centralized and turned into this hero to save this Vietnamese woman. It just feels like there are so many places in the world … where that seems to perpetuate itself, and people seem to assume that truth. … With Chris being the hero of the story, the villain being the Engineer (the Vietnamese brothel manager), that made me even more uncomfortable!

NM: That’s why shows like “In the Heights” — sorry, shameless plug — are so, so important: because the characters are full. They’re fleshed out. They each have their own arcs, and they have their own desires and dreams.

The POC characters in “Miss Saigon” who do have speaking roles don’t get that. They’re not allowed to. They’re either killed or cut off, or their only way out is to deny themselves of themselves.

JL: It’s so striking that … I feel like I understand Chris’ American wife’s perspective more than I understand Kim’s perspective.

Q: She had the best song in the show. … All Kim gets to assert is that she loves, over and over again.

NM: And that her life is dependent on Chris coming back for her, and them continuing their life and their love together.

JL: I don’t know a single Asian woman who has children and would ever say, “I can’t move on with my life until my husband comes back.”

NM: Right? Right? I swear!

JL: Every Asian woman I know is like, “All right, well, I’m working three jobs now.” … It just makes no sense to me.

Q: So why did these writers feel the need to make that part of the story?

NM: Because it puts her in a romantic, ingenue light and makes her vulnerable and delicate and beautiful and tragic.

Q: But why is that beautiful?

JL: … I guess (the writers’) answer might just be that they’re referring to the opera (“Madama Butterfly”). But the people who wrote (“Madama Butterfly”), I don’t understand it.

Q: But they’re not beholden to do what the opera does.



JL: … I look at Lauren Yee’s “Cambodian Rock Band,” which is the greatest play I’ve seen in like a decade. … She portrays these amazingly rounded musicians and how they were affected by the war, and how their work and their passion and their art was taken away by the war in this masterful way.

And then it looks at how the people affected by the war interact with their contemporary, modern-day children … not unlike Qui (Nguyen)’s work in “Vietgone,” which is now becoming a trilogy. …

Whatever feelings that folks might have about the positives of the story of “Miss Saigon” … I think that there is a point where, as we continue to make strides in creating complex and beautiful stories for ourselves, that we don’t necessarily have to think about the shows that have these problems that were created in our past.

Q: Does “Miss Saigon” have any virtues, aside from what it has historically meant to Asian American artists — and aside from what it meant to your parents’ generation as the first or only story of its kind?

JL: I think this gets to the question of whether or not we should continue to do the show or continue to watch the show. My answer is I don’t have an answer to what the other virtues are.

I think anybody doing a show, especially an older show that might have problems or holes, like “Miss Saigon” — I would never say never do a show, but you have to be so aware of the context, both historically and culturally to what you’re doing, and you have to have an approach as to why you’re doing it. …

For “Miss Saigon,” I don’t have an answer why, which is why I don’t see myself ever directing it. But I can’t say there’s not some other, smarter director out there that has some approach to bring out a brand-new perspective in this piece that we don’t see.

NM: Unless you are willing to identify the problematic points in terms of the character arcs and the way people historically have been represented in this piece and are willing to at least try to turn those things on their head, I think we should close the book on “Miss Saigon.”

Q: What about the people who just love the music of “Miss Saigon”?

NM: Then do it as a concert!

Q: And how is that different and less harmful?

NM: … When I saw “Miss Saigon” and the way that the male characters interact with the female characters, particularly all the men in Kim’s life who emotionally, verbally and physically abuse her throughout the play, it doesn’t do anything for her character arc other than keep hitting the audience over the head with, she is a victim, and she has no agency. You don’t hear that in the music.

JL: I look at it with my arts administrator hat on, thinking that there are so limited dollars for the arts. … Perhaps we should look at investing those dollars in newer, more complex, more nuanced stories than that one. …

The reason I do theater is because I believe that sharing stories is the strongest tool we have to garnering understanding among one another. The more we fight to tell our stories with the proper amount of depth and the proper amount of complexity and the proper amount of heart, the better it’s going to be for us.

Q: Can we draw any general principles from what you say about “Miss Saigon” to how to handle other works that are still problematic but perhaps have more compensatory virtues? What about Shylock in “The Merchant of Venice,” the slap in “Carousel” or the taming scene in “The Taming of the Shrew”?

JL: I look at the write-ups I’m reading of the current London production of “Company.” I personally really enjoy “Company” but also cringe a little bit at the things presented in it, because of the period in which it was written. And from what I read, so much of the problems of presenting the musical in a contemporary setting is sort of alleviated or put in a new light with a female Bobbi.

NM: I’m not saying you have to set “Merchant” in, I don’t know, Atlanta and talk about race dynamics. But even if you set a piece in period, you have to address it as a period piece, and you have to give the context of that period to the audience going in. … I don’t think enough people do it with the intention of understanding it that deeply.

Q: What might that look like?

NM: If you have a dramaturgical team, making sure they’re made of people who have the history and the context not only in their mind but in their bodies. …

For instance, when they were putting up “Miss Saigon,” did they have sex workers in the room who were able to talk about their experiences? Did they have Vietnam vets who have suffered and maybe still are suffering from PTSD who are willing to share their stories, in order to fully flesh out the character arcs of the people beyond the caricature of the text?

“Miss Saigon”: Book by Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schönberg. Music by Schönberg. Lyrics by Richard Maltby Jr. and Boublil, adapted from original French lyrics by Alain Boublil, with additional lyrics by Michael Mahler. Directed by Laurence Connor. Through Sunday, Nov. 4. Two hours, 35 minutes. $56-$256, subject to change. SHN’s Orpheum Theatre, 1192 Market St., S.F. 888-746-1799. www.shnsf.com

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