Oh ‘Boys,’ oh ‘Boys’

“JERSEY BOYS” may have hung on to beat “The Drowsy Chaperone” for the biggest Tony of them all, but the award for “best musical” (quotation marks are unavoidable) has rarely seemed so, well, bridge and tunnel.

No need for the producers to hold off uncorking their best -- the show’s upcoming national tour just got even more lucrative -- but the win doesn’t entirely vindicate the jukebox musical.

“Drowsy” picked up five Tonys (one more than “Jersey”), a sign of faith in original material as the linchpin of the art form’s future. Had the show’s cleverness outlived its initial conceit, there’s no doubt that “Drowsy” would have nabbed the top prize as well.

Alan Bennett’s “The History Boys” took another stand against hackneyed formula -- and came away the night’s big winner for drama. The six awards it received were no surprise given its rapturous reviews. More startling was the report that the production recouped its initial investment in less than two months, almost unheard of for a nonmusical.

Who would have expected a play about a bunch of college-bound British high schoolers and a wildly eccentric teacher with a groping touch to have had such wide appeal in New York? Here’s proof that idiosyncratic vision can be a surer bet than “safe” marketability when it comes to mainstream success.

The timing couldn’t be more ripe for this lesson. Broadway is again at a crossroads. Business is booming in the tourist-friendly Times Square. (Paid attendance broke 12 million this season, with grosses climbing to an unprecedented $862 million.) But the soul of the Great White Way has never seemed more up for grabs.

Market forces are inciting the proliferation of vacuous spectacles (musical retreads of anything iconic, especially vampires, fatal as they’ve been at the box office). And though the complaint grows tiring, the Julia Roberts factor has many legitimately nervous about the future of straight drama on Broadway. In short, can a play survive without tabloid fodder in the leading role?

The Tonys tentatively staked a claim for Broadway as something more than a theatrical theme park hawking Casey Kasem’s Top 40 and slumming Hollywood royals.

Roberts, who was gracious enough to be a presenter at the rudderless (and not coincidentally host-less) ceremony, wasn’t even nominated for her debut in Richard Greenberg’s “Three Days of Rain.” This snub seems especially pointed when you consider that one of the leading-actress nominees (Lynn Redgrave in “The Constant Wife”) was in a supporting role.

The choice of best musical may look like a cultural setback to the champions of “Drowsy,” who argue that that production points musical theater in a beguiling new direction. Too bad the frame established by Bob Martin and Don McKellar’s Tony-winning book is more engaging than what’s inside it.

What made “Drowsy” unique was the character known as Man in Chair. Sitting alone in his studio apartment, this flamboyant sad-sack mourns the demise of the American musical (making an apt crack about Elton John’s flailing attempts as a Broadway composer) before proceeding to play the cast album of a supposedly forgotten show from the effervescent era of George Gershwin and Cole Porter.

Musically, it’s rather insipid. Not many are likely to rush out to get the “Drowsy” CD -- or sit by their lonesome playing it all night, a la Man in Chair, if they do. The Tony-winning score by Lisa Lambert and Greg Morrison may be freshly minted, but it’s boringly derivative, a nostalgic pastiche that’s as memorable as yesterday’s corn flakes.

As any honest lover of Broadway show tunes would have to admit, this year’s best score category, which also included “The Color Purple,” “The Wedding Singer” and “The Woman in White,” should have been devoid of nominees. There was no best, only middling efforts that raise the question of whether the skill for composing musicals has become as quaintly outdated as, say, hat making. Yes, milliners continue to ply their trade, but, as any Easter parade veteran can tell you, not like they used to.

“Jersey Boys” has a soundtrack (what else can you call it?) that’s far more infectious, but the production was hampered by a lame book, a kind of VH-1 “Behind the Music” sob story of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons (replete with the usual bad beginnings, bad marriages and bad ends).

The show, however, boasted a secret weapon in John Lloyd Young, the star whose boyish vulnerability and irresistible falsetto brought the audience into a deeper emotional relationship to the story than is customary for a genre whose mission is to “repurpose” recognizable song catalogs into cash-cow extravaganzas.

Young deserved his Tony for best actor in a musical, beating out stiff competition from Harry Connick Jr. -- a name-brand you can be sure producers are going to do everything in their power to entice back onstage after his show, “The Pajama Game,” snared best musical revival.

In a Broadway season spectacularly lacking in diversity, “The Color Purple” turned into a juggernaut thanks to Oprah Winfrey’s name on the marquee as producer. For all the critical carping it received (was the movie really so much better?), the production brought in a new audience -- a value that seems to have gotten lost in the post-9/11 scramble for out-of-towners’ dollars.

LaChanze’s win for best actress in a musical was a recognition that the talented cast of “The Color Purple” is what has sustained the show’s strong word of mouth. Let’s face it: Not even Oprah could keep a total dog selling (though the role of pitchman does comes disturbingly easy to her, as her over-the-top hawking of the production on the Tony telecast made clear).

As expected, Cynthia Nixon won for her beautifully restrained performance in David Lindsay-Abaire’s “Rabbit Hole,” though it’s no mystery why the best actress category was so weak. What can anyone expect when all four contenders for best play were written by men?

There’s been a lot of hand-wringing over the fact that three of the four plays (“The History Boys,” Conor McPherson’s “Shining City” and Martin McDonagh’s “The Lieutenant of Inishmore”) started in London, with many critics voicing concern about the health of new-play development at home (to say nothing of the inevitable muttering at Actors’ Equity and the Society of Stage Directors about all the Tony cargo destined for British Airways).

But this seems to miss the obvious point that the ongoing Anglo-Irish colonization of Broadway has less do with the fragile health of American playwriting than the jittery state of American producing, which is always on the lookout for a sure ticket. Translation: positive reviews from overseas and elsewhere, all of which these plays received before they arrived.

This isn’t to throw a wet blanket on the triumph of “The History Boys.” The glorious lesson for everyone is that the play succeeded because of -- not despite -- its unconventionality. True, the out-of-control economics of Broadway has made it virtually impossible for something this innovative to be born there. Still, nothing is more contagious than fresh imagination. The victory is not just inspiring -- it’s a cause for hope.