The Big Apple On A Not So Big Budget - Miss Saigon's Final Broadway Performance

Of all Broadway shows, why Miss Saigon? Well it started about 3 years ago on a trip to Cambodia. On our flight home, an American beside me started some small talk which after a few minutes ended up with him wondering why I haven't seen Miss Saigon yet or at least know the story. I'm also wondering why people find it easy to talk to me randomly. First of all it's a Vietnamese story and I'm Filipino and the only link we have back then to Miss Saigon was Lea Salonga. The guy insisted that I watch the show and now I'm glad I did.

Miss Saigon at The Broadway Theater

From the NY Public Library, we took the subway to Broadway to catch the 8PM show time of Miss Saigon. We got there 15 minutes early and the lines were already spilling into the street corners.

Inside the Broadway Theater

The show is on it's final broadway performance as we saw on the billboard at Times Square that the show will run only until January 14, 2018.

Miss Saigon Ad on Times Square

The story was a sad one but the performance of The Engineer was highly entertaining! Standing ovation for that guy! It was also interesting to know that the guy who played the engineer during the Lea Salonga era was the High Sparrow from Game of Thrones, Jonathan Pryce. The role of the engineer is now played by Jon Jon Briones. 

Sadly, Rachel Anne Go already left the production for the West End version of Hamilton. However, Filipino talent was still on full display as most of the lead have Filipino lineage according to the playbill distributed before the play started.

Telecharge confirmation email

So how much does our tickets cost? We got our tickets for $95 or $47.50 for each ticket. Credit card reflected Php5,060 for the two tickets. This was relatively cheap, getting a less than $50 broadway show ticket. There are online guides to score cheap tickets wherein you line up at a TKTS booth on Time Square for same day tickets but we didn't have time for that. Upon checking other guides and confirming through reviews, I ended up booking at BroadwayBox.com barely a week before our target show date. The site seems a bit shady redirecting you to another website Telecharge. But fear not, the site is easy to navigate and is legit. I've checked other websites who seem to offer cheaper tickets but end up being more expensive as they only declare the service charge upon check-out. It would be still good practice to check-out other sites as well as ticket prices may fluctuate and sites may or may not have the best prices for you. 

Our seats were at row G and were good enough for us. It's not the best of seats but it's not the worst either. At least our seats were not high enough that the mere altitude would make our nose bleed. The location of our seats did not take away from a great broadway experience.

The show lasted for more than 2 hours, we were out of the theater just before 11PM. And after a quick online check, we still have time to go up The Empire State Building!