America: As Broadway tunes up for tomorrow's Tony awards ceremony, New York producers are celebrating their most successful season to date, with more than 12 million tickets sold in the past year. Box office receipts soared to $861 million, swollen by the success of "premium tickets" - good seats for popular shows sold at the last minute for up to $300 each.
There are some along the Great White Way, however, who complain that instead of celebrating, Broadway should be mourning the destruction of its very own art form - the musical.
New York Times critic Ben Brantley pronounced last month that, after almost half-a-century of failing health, the Broadway musical had entered the last stage of decay.
"A living ghost walks on Broadway. Colourless and thin to the point of transparency, it is far scarier than the make-believe ghouls - the vampires and phantoms in opera cloaks - who sometimes occupy the stages around Times Square. Though its guises are many, it always exudes the same damp aura of unconvincing jollity, like that of a superannuated party girl who lost her confidence with her youth and has taken to wearing her daughter's trendy clothes. Such is the face of the American musical in the year 2006."
In fact, there are 19 musicals currently playing on Broadway, 12 of which are new shows and many are sold out most nights. Most of these shows are, however, either based on popular films, such as the Wedding Singer or Tarzan, or are vehicles for well-known songs by the likes of John Lennon and Johnny Cash.
"They are to their source material what the T-shirts and souvenir programmes on sale in theatre lobbies are to the shows within: disposable reminders of the real things," Brantley hisses.
The debate over the Broadway musical has become focused on the two favourites to win tomorrow's Tony for Best Musical - Jersey Boys and The Drowsy Chaperone.
Jersey Boys is the ultimate jukebox musical, the story of the rise to fame of New Jersey's Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons told through hits such as Big Girls Don't Cry and Walk Like a Man.
The surprise hit of the season, The Drowsy Chaperone, is set in the shabby apartment of a cranky old show queen who recalls the great days of the musical and starts complaining about the state of today's theatre, even before the lights come up.
"I hate theatre," he says. "Well, it's so disappointing, isn't it? . . . You know there was a time when people sat in darkened theatres and thought to themselves, 'What have George and Ira got for me tonight?' or 'Can Cole Porter pull it off again?' Can you imagine? Now it's 'Please, Elton John, must we continue this charade'?"
As he plays a scratchy old record of a 1920s musical called The Drowsy Chaperone, the characters appear in his apartment and perform it, interrupted occasionally by his comments and titbits about the private lives of the performers.
The musical they perform is not an old show at all, in fact, but an original book and score created by four Canadians led by Bob Martin, who plays the show queen himself.
The show has all the elements of the traditional musical - great show- stopping numbers, spectacular dance sequences, engaging leading players and a silly plot. It is further enlivened by the narrator's comments, as when he notes after Love Is Always Lovely in the End, a soft-shoe duet: "Don't you think that someone must have been aware of the awkward sexual connotation of that title?"
Broadway purists have seized on the contest between Jersey Boys and The Drowsy Chaperone as a key test for the Tonys, demanding that the Canadians should be rewarded for their wit, originality and craft in creating genuinely new musicals.
Advocates of Jersey Boys argue that jukebox musicals such as Mamma Mia can be original, entertaining shows even if the music is familiar. Indeed, they suggest that pop songs occupy such an important place in the modern psyche that the theatre must attempt to explore the emotional connection old songs can create with an audience.
While the critics battle it out over the future of the musical, theatregoers (more than half of whom are tourists) show little sign of caring. Most of them probably share the show queen's sentiment expressed during The Drowsy Chaperone about the purpose of going to a show. "I just want a story and a few good songs that will take me away. I just want to be entertained. I mean, isn't that the point?"
