David Quang Pham
There is a style of musical (pre-dating the golden age of musicals slightly) that’s was called “the musical play” as opposed to musical comedy. It is a solid and serious piece exploring important social content through a book that could stand alone and music that complements the mood and the players. ThreePenny Opera heads a list of this type that would include Lady in the Dark, Showboat, Pal Joey, and Cradle Will Rock (I’ll include Carousel as well). This type of musical play is all but extinct in my eyes.
Until now.
A Symphony For Portland deftly explores a post-pandemic America forced to resort to drastic means to survive. A world that looks uncomfortably like depression-era America. We meet a cacophony of working homeless (those individuals that have jobs and academic lives but go home to an abandoned building or shelter), unwilling sex-workers (the fodder for every exposé on sex-trafficking) and those middle class parents who are sure this cannot happen to their children – until it does.
David Quang Pham