The much-awaited 25th anniversary West End revival of “Miss Saigon” is finally put into motion as producer Cameron Mackintosh has announced the casting of 17-year-old Filipino-American singer named Eva Noblezada in the coveted lead role.
According to a report by DailyMail.co.uk, Eva is a native of Charlotte, North Carolina who was discovered by casting director Tara Rubin at the 2013 Jimmy Awards in New York City.
“Tara said: ‘This girl’s fantastic!’ She filmed her and sent the footage to me and a few weeks ago I went to meet with Eva. She’s performed in shows at her school, but she has never done a big professional musical before,” Mackintosh told the Daily Mail. Watch Eva perform in this video from the Blumey Awards in Charlotte, NC last June:
Noblezada joins a long line of famous Filipinas who have essayed the role of the Vietnamese bar girl who fell in love with an American GI at the tailend of the Vietnam War. These include Monique Wilson, Joanna Ampil, Ima Castro, Jennifer Paz, Ivy Rose Padilla, Ma-Anne Dionisio, Cezarah Campos and Lea Salonga, who originated the role.
Salonga’s starmaking performance of Kim won her a Tony Award and a Laurence Olivier Award and is, hands down, considered by many as her finest hour in theater.
The report said Noblezada reminded Mackintosh of Salonga, who was also 17 when she bagged the role. It added that Noblezada’s aunt, Annette Calud, who initially played a bar girl in the Broadway production of the show will reprise the same role when “Miss Saigon” starts performances at the Prince Edward Theatre on May 3 next year.
So whatever happened to the Manila auditions last year that yielded seven shortlisted aspirants for the musical?
One of them, namely pop singer Rachelle Ann Go, has been cast in the supporting role of Gigi, the hardened stripper initially voted Miss Saigon who gets to sing one of the most popular songs in the musical, “Movie in My Mind”. The role was played by Isay Alvarez in the musical’s original West End production in 1989.
A recording star who started her singing career as the grand champion of the GMA singing contest “Search for a Star” in 2004, Rachelle made her theater debut last year in the lead role of Princess Ariel in Atlantis Productions’ staging of Disney’s “The Little Mermaid”.
The role won Rachelle a Best Actress in a Musical award from Broadway World Philippine Awards and paved the way for flourishing new career as a theatre actress. This year, she is once again nominated for a Best Actress in a Musical award for her performance as Jane Potter in Viva Atlantis Theatricals’ “Tarzan”.
The other announced cast members of the West End restaging of“Miss Saigon” so far are Jon Jon Briones as the Engineer, Alistair Brammer as Chris, Hugh Maynard as John and Tamsin Carroll as Ellen. Understudies for the roles of Kim and Gigi are not yet known.
source: interaksyon.com
