Jesus Christ Superstar Analysis

The two musicals that I am going to use to discuss the quote are ‘Into The Woods’ and ‘Jesus Christ Superstar.’ Once could argue that the first part of the quote could be talking about how musicals are supposed to be outlandish and wild, for example if we use ‘Into The Woods’ the plot line for the musical is bizarre because all the characters have already been written. Therefore, the audience already has a perceived image of what the characters are going to be like because they already know the story of certain characters like Cinderella and Little Red Riding Hood. So to mix all of these characters together is somewhat peculiar as it has never been done. In Jesus Christ Superstar there is no dialogue throughout the entire show, all the acting

This is why the narrator really helps by describing what is going on in each scene. With Jesus Christ Superstar, on the one hand you could argue that it is hard to create a suspense of disbelief among the audience. Because all the musical is doing is depicting the life and death of Jesus Christ, everybody already knows the story of Jesus Christ so it will be hard to create a suspense of disbelief among the audience when they already know the story of Jesus. Debatably it is much easier to create suspense in silence, which is why plays probably do a better job of creating a suspense of disbelief among the audience, for example if we use the play ‘DNA’ by Dennis Kelly. There is a scene where the characters are discussing what they are going to do once they find out they have killed somebody, for a short while there is silence amongst the characters whilst they all turn to one character in particular to remedy the situation. The silence is very powerful as the audience have no idea what the character is going to say thus creating suspense. In the third part of the quote Sondheim talks about there being no fourth wall in