“The heat is on in Saigon.” It certainly is in this superlative production of Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schönberg’s musical Miss Saigon, which is electrifying on every front, and includes some unforgettable performances.

Abigail Adriano and Nigel Huckle in Miss Saigon. Photo © Daniel Boud

Based on Puccini’s 1904 opera, Madama Butterfly, the epic musical was inspired by a photograph that Schönberg came across from 1975, picturing a young girl at Saigon airport, sobbing as she left her Vietnamese mother to go and live with her ex-GI American father.

Set in Saigon during the final days of the Vietnam War, and then three years later in Bangkok, Miss Saigon tells the story of the doomed love affair between a young Vietnamese orphan Kim, who is forced to work in a brothel run by the notorious Engineer, and an American G.I. called Chris.

Featuring a lush, operatic score, the sung-through musical moves from the raunchy rhythms of The Heat Is On to the frightening militaristic The Morning of the Dragon to big production numbers like The American Dream, as well as meltingly emotional ballads and torch songs like Sun and Moon, I...