Katie Rose Clarke and Nicholas Christopher will helicopter into the Miss Saigon revival as Ellen and John, respectively. Directed by Laurence Connor, Boublil and Schönberg’s musical is set to begin performances on March 1, 2017 at the Broadway Theatre and officially open on March 23. The limited engagement will run on the Main Stem through January 14, 2018 before launching a North American tour later in the year.
Clarke’s Broadway credits include Allegiance, Wicked and Light in the Piazza. Christopher was featured this summer as George Washington in Hamilton. Other New York theater credits include Lazarus, Whorl Inside A Loop , Motown The Musical, Rent and Hurt Village.
As previously reported, the company will also include Jon Jon Briones as The Engineer, Eva Noblezada as Kim, Rachelle Ann Go as Gigi and Devin Ilaw as Thuy. Further casting, including the lead male role of Chris, will be announced later this month.
Based on Puccini’s Madame Butterfly and set in 1975 during the final days of the American occupation of Saigon, the Boublil and Schönberg musical follows the relationship between an American GI and a young Vietnamese woman. Orphaned by war, 17-year-old Kim is forced to work as a bar girl in a sleazy Saigon nightclub run by "The Engineer." John, an American GI, buys his friend Chris the services of Kim for the night, igniting a doomed trans-Pacific relationship.
The original production premiered in the West End in 1989; it transferred to the Broadway Theatre two years later and ran for nearly ten years in New York. The revival opened at the West End’s Prince Edward Theatre in May 2014 and closed in February.
The Broadway Theatre is currently the home of the revival of Fiddler on the Roof; the Bartlett Sher-helmed production will close on December 31.