The crew got doughnuts.

"Everyone's a little edgy today. We brought in doughnuts to try to win over a few disgruntled people," said George Maxwell, set designer for Pioneer Theatre Company's upcoming production of "Miss Saigon."

Such is the life of the set-building crew, one week before opening, while building a difficult but iconic set piece: the helicopter.

"It's just one word in the script. I keep telling everyone, 'It's just one word,' " Maxwell joked. "No one is buying that."

For the musical set in the final weeks before the fall of Saigon, Maxwell and the rest of the staff and crew have been going through a bit of a history lesson. "It's called the helicopter war — it was the mode of transportation," he said. "But when they wrote this, they had no idea it would become the iconic image for the show."

A modern adaptation of Puccini's "Madame Butterfly," "Miss Saigon" is about an American G.I., Chris, who falls in love with Kim, a young Vietnamese woman who later has his child.

When America pulled out of Saigon, many women were left to raise these children — referred to in the show was "bui doi," or the dust of life — on their own.

Composer Claude-Michel Schonberg felt compelled to write a musical about the Vietnam War, after coming across a magazine picture of a Vietnamese woman who was sending her child to America, where the girl's biological father, an ex-GI, could provide her with a better life.

Moved by this photo, calling it the ultimate sacrifice, Schonberg and his writing partner, Alain Boublil, the duo responsible for "Les Miserables," crafted a musical that would go on to win many awards, including Tony, Olivier and Drama Desk nods, as well as becoming the 10th-longest-running musical in Broadway history.

"Yes, I'd say it's a love story," said Kevin Gray who plays The Engineer, an amoral club owner and pimp who also supplies the comedic relief, (or "ironic relief" as Gray puts it). "It's about the love of two people; it's about the love of a mother and a child; and about the love of country. It's very much about the love of freedom and at what cost; and it's about the love of the dream of what America is in its best and worst elements — which is pertinent now," he said.

"It's hard for most Americans who have never had to lose their freedoms to imagine what that would be like. We don't realize how good we have it," said Gray, who is in Salt Lake City for the first time and uses "an old skiing trick of putting Vaseline in my nostrils so as not to dry out completely."