"Miss Saigon" at the Paliku Theatre not only features excellent voices and performances, it also makes dramatic sense.

The updated version of Puccini's "Madame Butterfly," set against the 1975 fall of Saigon, is by the creators of "Les Misérables" (Claude-Michel Schonberg and Alain Boublil, with lyrics by Boublil and Richard Maltby Jr.). All dialogue is sung, and all personalities are bigger than life.

Ron Bright and his cast assure that the emotionally charged roles work. The key: Everyone in the story is driven by delusion.

The Americans believe that wealth and power allow them to fix things. In Act 1 they secure a hedonistic mix of drugs and women to mask the horrors of a losing war. In Act 2 they try to correct the plight of mixed-race orphans that have been left behind by departing troops.

The Vietnamese are deluded by the American dream, fixated by the movies in their minds of a life they don't understand but in which they want to participate.

No character comes to a satisfying end. In Bright's staging of the finale, American soldier Chris screams out his rage as abandoned lover Kim is dying in his arms; the amoral Engineer, who runs the ironically named Dreamland bar, has lost his one chance for escape; and Chris' American wife Ellen confronts her husband's tiny son — without a hint or promise of "happily ever after."

It's the music, emotional excesses and big effects that make it a successful musical tragedy. The Paliku Theatre production is beautifully supported by tested and promising performers, and a solid technical crew.

High school sophomore Brittany Browning is remarkable in the leading role of Kim. Her voice is strong, clear and true, and she projects the necessary innocence to sustain the character. She separates her life as a bar girl from her conviction that her American soldier will return for her. Her discovery that he has shown up with another wife galvanizes her into a desperate act to save her son.

A professional "Miss Saigon" veteran, Michael Bright lets the music sustain the confused character of Chris. Bright's duet with Browning on "The Last Night of the World" is the highlight of Act 1, when their soaring voices create a moment out of time that temporarily insulates the characters from their environment. Chris' latent urge to recapture that moment helps explain his fumbling moves that precipitate the final tragedy.

Kawika McGuire plays John, the epitome of the Ugly American soldier in Act 1 who undergoes an unexplained intermission metamorphosis into an advocate for mixed-race orphans. He effectively sings the plaintively sentimental "Bui-Doi," which opens Act 2.

Also contributing to the do-good muddle of the second act is Jade Stice as Chris' American wife Ellen. Reeling against the sudden disclosure of her husband's foreign son and the woman who still loves him, Ellen frantically struggles to keep her balance on a surface that has suddenly turned to quicksand.

Given the tortured landscape of central events, it is little wonder audiences turn warmly to the Engineer, played by Leonard Villanueva. Untroubled by conventional morality and blithely detached from social and political upheavals, the Engineer's motivation — greed — makes him a comic survivor. Villanueva's performance culminates in the show-stopping "The American Dream," complete with Vegas-style choreography and special effects. Villanueva's work in capturing the Engineer's desperate desires makes the production number soar.

Vocal director Les Ceballos is excellent as communist official Thuy, Kim's cousin, bringing vocal excitement and icy presence to a supporting role.

Congratulations to musical director Clark Bright, choreographer Jade Anguay Bright and costumer Evette Tanouye Allerdings. Sets and lighting by Lloyd Riford III are stunning.

Joseph T. Rozmiarek has been reviewing theater since 1973.