The Politics of ‘Saigon’ : Theater: Show at OCPAC isn’t actively promoted in Vietnamese community because of feelings over setting.

It was inevitable that “Miss Saigon,” the Vietnam War-era musical extravaganza that has run continuously in London for virtually a decade, and eight years and nearly 3,500 performances on Broadway, would finally make its way to Orange County.

But the Orange County Performing Arts Center is not actively promoting the show--which opens Thursday in Costa Mesa for a three-week run--to the county’s substantial Vietnamese community.

It is the biggest and one of the longest-running musicals the center will present this season and involves four days of advance setup of props and sets.

Because dark undercurrents of war flow beneath the musical’s romance--spanning the years from 1975 and the fall of Saigon to 1978 and the rise of Ho Chi Minh City--center officials worried that it may be too politically controversial for Vietnamese residents of Orange County, many of whom fled the communist regime. Center officials are mindful of lengthy protests over the display of a communist flag at a Westminster video store and the recent picketing by anti-communist groups of an exhibit of Vietnamese art at the Bowers Museum and Cultural Center in Santa Ana.

“To be honest, we did not do a real aggressive marketing campaign for this community,” said Todd Bentjen, the center’s vice president for marketing and communications. “There was a real sensitivity that we weren’t sure that [Vietnamese emigres] wanted to revisit what for many of them were terrible times. We’re putting out the word in conventional ways and giving people the option without any kind of heavy sell.

“That just didn’t seem to be the right approach this time,” he said.

The center usually conducts its promotional campaign through advertising and contacts with local media and with its group sales department, which can network with community contacts to promote shows.

The local Latino community was targeted in both ways for such recent center acts as “Forever Tango,” the Ballet Nacional de Cuba and Julio Iglesias, Bentjen said.

The most direct outreach for “Miss Saigon” has been to five newspapers in and around Garden Grove’s Little Saigon community. Center officials said that only Nguoi Viet News is doing an advance feature on the show. A reporter for Nguoi Viet who did not want to be identified by name said the general attitude about the show is “mostly negative. It’s about a time that brings up no good feelings.”

So far, however, Bentjen said, the center hasn’t had any negative contact about the musical, and he was hopeful that would remain the case.

“ ‘Miss Saigon’ isn’t about the war. It’s a love story with the war as a backdrop,” he said.

When “Miss Saigon” opened originally, there was a firestorm of protest by actors of Asian heritage over the casting of British actor Jonathan Pryce in the pivotal role of the cynical Saigon entrepreneur, the Engineer. The production coming to Costa Mesa does have actor-singer Phong Truong, the only adult Vietnamese cast member in any “Miss Saigon” company to date. But the lead role of the Engineer is being played by Joseph Foronda, who is in his fourth year playing the character after a Broadway stint in the role.

The current touring production--only the second in North America--is a measuring rod of how durable producer Cameron Mackintosh and co-authors Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schonberg’s follow-up to “Les Miserables” has become. It also is an example of how to make a huge, complex show work for the long road.

For Foronda and company stage manager Mahlon Kruse, their arrival at Segerstrom Hall is one more stop for the long-running roadshow. How do they keep things fresh?

“Part of that effort stems from Cameron Mackintosh’s absolute insistence that what audiences see in a touring version of this show is just what one would see on Broadway or in London [where the show’s 10th anniversary will be celebrated later this month],” Kruse said.

“The technical and artistic standards are exactly the same and not made cheap just because we’re playing in a city for only three weeks. We can do that because we’ve gotten really good at streamlining the load-in and load-out of the [production’s] elements.”

These include 110,000 pounds of equipment, including an 18-foot statue of Ho Chi Minh and the show’s well-known helicopter set piece. There also is a complete stage with internal technical devices transported from venue to venue.

Foronda, who is Filipino-American, noted that keeping the Engineer vital is a matter of “getting freer with the character, not depending on how other actors have approached him. I don’t play the cynicism as markedly as most actors would, I think.

“My greater intention, which I’ve discussed a lot with [the show’s current director and executive producer] Peter Lawrence, is to relate to the audience that the Engineer is focused on getting to the U.S. and out of Saigon by any means possible, since he’ll probably die there if he doesn’t.”

The touring actually helps, he added.

“This show never really gets tiring, you know, because there’s a new opening night every month, with all the hoopla and tuxedos,” Foronda said. “You can really get caught up in all of that.”

* “Miss Saigon,” Segerstrom Hall at Orange County Performing Arts Center, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. Opens Thursday; Tuesdays-Fridays, 8 p.m.; Saturdays, 2 and 8 p.m.; Sundays, 2 and 7:30 p.m. Mon., Sept. 20, 8 p.m.; Wed., Sept. 22, 8 p.m. Sign language interpreted Sept. 11, 2 p.m. Ends Sept. 25. (714) 740-7878; (213) 365-3500. $16-$66.