So fullness of that scene did have to be compressed down to that little couplet.

There are, in fact, some rather disturbing rhymed couplets, if you will.

“My heart stopped beating long ago / It pours out like a river,” one couplet goes.

The show’s straightforward plot trajectory is neatly summed up in a dismal couplet in the lament “Gethsemane,” in which Jesus finally resigns himself to his fate: “Then, I was inspired / Now I’m sad and tired.”

The song condemned war, greed and injustice with such couplets as “Nobody gives us rhyme or reason/Have one doubt, they call it treason.”