In 2017, Kimber Lee went to see Miss Saigon on Broadway. The actor turned playwright had never seen the musical in its entirety before but had friends who had performed in it and she knew the shape of the story: a doomed romance between a Vietnamese woman and a GI during the Vietnam war, inspired by Puccini’s Madama Butterfly.
But that didn’t prepare her for the dismay she felt. “It was utter shock,” she says, speaking from New York via Zoom. “I remember sinking lower and lower in my seat. Even walking in and seeing the set I was like, ‘OK, I see what’s going on.’”
