Yet big theatres do not have to be shackled to big effects: the magic of Napier's brilliant work for Miss Saigon lies not in the high tech scenes, but in the effortless way he has focussed attention to a scene of concentrated emotion played on a shallow, twenty foot truck at the front of a forty foot stage opening, before stretching out the action again to its full eighty foot depth. Now that's entertainment...
Sightline vol 24 no 4 - Ian Herbert
1st October 1989
If a single prize were to be awarded it would go to the Director, …and his designer, John Napier… Between them they have devised a stunning series of theatrical effects which are more than just theatrical in the narrow sense. Their tour de force is a recreation of the pull-out from Saigon, complete with descending and departing helicopter.
THE SUNDAY TELEGRAPH "High flying with a bruised butterfly" - John Gross
24th September 1989
...his designer, John Napier, certainly give us spectacle, but it springs from the story rather than being superfluous show: the raising of a towering golden statue to Ho Chi Minh embodies Communist worship of secular idols just as the descent from the flies of a helicopter, into which American marines are unceremoniously bundled, expresses something of the poetic hastiness of the American evacuation.
THE GUARDIAN "Puccimi with Politics"
20th September 1989
