It is more than 30 years since Miss Saigon first opened in the UK and went on to wow audiences around the world — a sweeping, operatic love story that arrived in a blaze of bombast, not least in its now-infamous helicopter evacuation scene, whose whirring blades and vertiginous spectacle became the stuff of West End legend.

For a generation, that moment defined blockbuster musical theatre: technically audacious, emotionally charged and impossible to ignore. But by 2025, with theatre audiences changed and sensibilities sharpened, it was time for a reboot.

Miss Saigon: The Legend Reborn arrived in Plymouth’s Theatre Royal this week not as a museum piece but as a recalibration — asking whether this epic tale of love and loss can still soar, without simply relying on the thunder of its past.

For the uninitiated, Miss Saigon - based loosely on Puccini’s Madame Butterfly - starts in the final days of the Vietnam War, when Kim, a young Vietnamese woman forced to work in a Saigon strip bar, falls in love with Chris, an American GI.

They marry impulsively before a chaotic US evacuation separates them. Chris returns to America believing Kim to be dead, and marries another woman, Ellen. Meanwhile we learn that Kim survived, gave birth to Chris’s son, Tam, and spends years hoping Chris will return.

When Chris finally learns about the child, he travels back to Vietnam with Ellen, where Kim tragically sacrifices herself so Tam can go to America.

Directed by Jean-Pierre van der Spuy and touring under Michael Harrison and Cameron Mackintosh, The Legend Reborn is a production that builds to a powerful crescendo - and one where every song surpasses the last.

Seann Miley Moore as The Engineer excels - his voice, versatility and wit powering his flamboyant character’s desperate battle to better himself by following the American dream, and lead to him being draped near-naked, wrapped in an American flag and being hoisted into the air astride a giant neon dollar sign.

Julianne Pundan, in making her professional debut as Kim, portrays a haunting vulnerability that defies her short CV.

The aim was to create a fresh, flexible show that still delivers West End magic - something we’re used to at TRP.

Miss Saigon: The Legend Reborn is a show that endures not just for its spectacle, but because its themes — war, love, displacement, cultural clash — remain stubbornly current. It runs at Theatre Royal Plymouth until February 28.