Metatheatre in Musicals

Musicals combine the full spectrum of all arts: words, singing, dancing, stage spectacle; providing the audiences with what satisfies all their tastes. The addition of music to a standard play has various benefits; for example, it heightens emotion, reinforces dramatic action, and evokes atmosphere and mood in ways that words alone cannot do. "It defies the time standards of spoken language" (Kislan 214) . It can set and sustain a dramatic moment and can function as an acceptable transition device between the parts of the Musical. Finally, it generates dance since a theatre of spoken language limits movement and spectacles while Musicals set the stage ready for choreographing (217) . In the best musicals, songs do not exist only for their entertainment value, but to develop the story, mood and theme, communicating drama through music. The song inserts a lyrical moment into the cause-and-effect progress of the plot, a moment that suspends book time in favor of lyric time giving the audience the pleasure that accompanies rhyme, melody and meter.