"Don't ask where I'm going, just listen when I'm gone, and far away you'll hear me singing softly to the dawn." -Pippin

Within more than 90 percent of musicals there is a romance that is some how forbidden and must conquer over all. 50 percent of the time this ends in one of the couple dying in the others arms, ‘Moulin Rouge’ is a prime example of this.


“The music man most often is distracted by some Hollywood siren - an alluring, morally questionable type who appeals to his more primitive qualities. She (the heroine) may be a hustling chorus girl, or a wealthy patron in search of a gigolo, but whatever the situation she is in, by contrast she amplifies the hero’s virtues.” (Hollywood Genres, Thomas Schatz pg 197. ) This quotation talks about how within musicals opposites attract and a love story stems from this opposition. Quite often the opposition is the fact of class or rank, which makes the love forbidden and so the romance becomes stronger and attempts to defeat all objects, however not always succeeding.

Musicals do not such produce romantic issues of contradiction, there are many other forms of it within a cultural and formal situation - Object/image, reality/illusion, story/ performance, work/play, stasis/movement, repression/expression, community/ individual, and particularly man/women.
Many examples can be given for each of these, and several musicals use more than two of each of these contradictions. For story/performance the best example is ‘Into The Woods’ which is a musical based on several fairytales such as Cinderella, Jack and the Beanstalk, Red Riding hood and several more all meeting. The musical shows the story/performance contradiction by entering the narrator into the storyline and feeding him to the giant in an attempt to save their own lives, This is also an example of reality viruses illusion. Repression/expression is present in most musicals as one of the main narrative plotlines. An ideal example of work/play can be seen within ‘Sweet Charity’, Charity (the heroine) is a stripper and mixes in with a higher class than her own, resulting in some strange occurrences. The work viruses play contradiction is presented by her enjoying her job when she first started but then her realising the sacrifice that the other dances have had resulting in their inability to leave the strip club.

For object/image, there can be several examples, however, as ’Cats’ holds none any of the above contradiction except for community/individual, it is probably best to use it as an example. Grisabella, was once the ‘glamour cat’ of the angelical cat troupe but after her owners die she goes from glamour to sleaze. The community of cats scorn Grisabella, bullying her as the individual. She constantly interrupts the angelic cats celebration and begs for that second chance and in the end is granted to be ‘the angelic choice’, meaning that the community chooses her, the individual, to be re-born. Object/image also relates to Grisabella, as she was once an image of perfection, however is now an object suffering.
Within all musicals, they hold at least three of the above contradictions, sometimes more than that. These contradictions support the narrative structure and give the musical depth and create the conflict that is needed to make most musicals poignant and satisfying.