If there’s anyone who knows what makes a stage production a powerful classic that will stand the test of time, it’s Sir Cameron Mackintosh. The track record of the the producer who brought us the longest-running musicals of all time – Les Miserables, The Phantom Of The Opera and Cats, as well as Miss Saigon, now playing in Singapore – is quite peerless. How tedious it must be for him to still be talking about these shows after some 40 years? “I’m completely flabbergasted,” Mackintosh, 77, told us over the phone from his country estate in the UK.
“Three and four decades on, my shows are still going, and acting like brand new shows again. That’s what’s amazing.” It has been 23 years since Miss Saigon was last in Singapore, but Mackintosh still remembers the Kallang Theatre where it was staged.
He also credits Singapore with creating “one of my greatest culinary memories”. “I was taken to a huge outdoor food place” near the airport, he enthused. There, he had “the best chilli crab I’ve ever eaten.
” Although he hasn’t travelled here for the current production, he’s still fully invested. “I’ve absolutely loved redoing it again. I obviously do care a lot about making sure it’s never a ‘revival’.
I treat the show every time as a brand new production,” he said. What’s more, “You’ve got the last big production I will do with Miss Saigon. I don’t think one could ever afford to do it again at the scale you’ve got!” Mackinto.