Roped in: will spectacles like Tarzan create the kind of avid Broadway musical fans that Drowsy Chaperone celebrates.

For fans of musical theater, the Broadway season that ended in the spring will likely be remembered for one show: a giddy, low-tech salute to, well, fans of musical theater.

I know, I know--we're not all like the lonely hero of The Drowsy Chaperone. I, for one, would probably not choose a fizzy 1920s trifle as my all-time fave, or know who in the original cast was cheating on whom. I couldn't tick off the credits of everyone involved, or list the songs that were cut on the road. I might not even remember who did the choreography. But the Man in Chair, who gets through his dreary days with the help of his prized collection of Broadway musical albums, does resemble me--and, I suspect, everyone else who cherishes West Side Story or Bloomer Girl or Carousel--in his devotion.

Portrayed by the irresistibly hang-dog Bob Martin, who is also the show's co-writer, the Man plays his favorite Broadway album for the audience and watches along with us as this utterly silly 1920s bonbon--The Drowsy Chaperone, of course--materializes on the stage. The characters are an assortment of 1920s stage clich4s borrowed from here and there: a preening diva (Sutton Foster, who better?), a Latin Lothario (the just-about unrecognizable Danny Burstein), their cheerfully clueless hostess (Georgia Engel, from The Mary Tyler Moore Show), and her permanently arch butler (Edward Hibbert, from Frasier), all gathered for the diva's wedding. The chaperone? Don't even ask. Periodically, the Man comes out of his Chair to elucidate on the inane goings-on.

More than most musicals, The Drowsy Chaperone recognizes the mysterious, elemental something that allows us to succumb to this ditsy art form in which otherwise normal-looking characters burst into song and break into dance. Casey Nicholaw, the show's director and choreographer, has sprinkled Drowsy Chaperone with spot-on pastiches of flapper-era choreography. That means tap, of course--a tap-dancing bridegroom, his tap-dancing best man, a pair of tap-lancing gangsters. And mindless as the musical numbers are, the Man in Chair's delight in them sucks you into the show--his passion is contagious. You can be awed by a tragedy or amused by a comedy without ever taking leave of your senses; only musical theater requires that you fall a little bit in love.

That kind of reaction was not very much in evidence during the rest of the season, and it's no wonder The Drowsy Chaperone garnered 13 Tony nominations this year--more than any other new musical. It bested, easily, the high-flying theatrics of Tarzan and Lestat, the burnished earnestness of The Wedding Singer and The Color Purple, the pre-certified musical medleys of Lennon, Jersey Boys, and Ring of Fire, and the dance-powered energy of Hot Feet.

There may be a lesson here--or several. Unlike Tarzan and Lestat, which were created to extend corporate brands, The Drowsy Chaperone has a disarmingly simple concept and a production history that would justify its being called an accident (it began life as a private entertainment to celebrate Martin's impending marriage). Unlike The Wedding Singer and The Color Purple, which count on our familiarity with their original source material or the jukebox shows, which count on our nostalgia for the music of Johnny Cash, or the Four Seasons, or Earth, Wind & Fire, The Drowsy Chaperone flatters our intelligence by assuming we're smart enough to appreciate something that relies only on its wit and originality.

With its front-loaded, big-name talent--music by Phil Collins; book by David Henry Hwang; and sets, costumes, and direction by Bob Crowley--Disney's Tarzan is the show most observers would have picked as the one most likely to succeed this season. An elaborate, complex production, it is almost the direct opposite of The Drowsy Chaperone. Forget the Man in Chair--Tarzan features a shipwreck, troops of flying monkeys, and more bungee cords than have ever been seen on a Broadway stage. As much a work of engineering as theater, it was designed to be a spectacle.

In many ways, it is. The slow-motion scene in which Tarzan's parents drown balletically in midair is hauntingly beautiful. In a liana-lined jungle, the ape clan that adopts Tarzan is always on the move--on land, it's with the simian awkwardness of Meryl Tankard's evocative, truly original choreography; aloft, it's with the swinging, swooping grace of Pichon Baldinu's "aerial designs." Compared to the genial, almost offhand little tap sequences in Drowsy Chaperone, the production numbers in Tarzan are positively operatic.

But spectacle will get you only so far in the musical theater. Yes, it can be thrilling. And yes, it was a huge part of hits like Cats, Les Miserables, and Phantom of the Opera. But those audiences were not losing their hearts to spectacle. They were losing their hearts to Grizabella and Jean Valjean and Christine, and to songs like "Memory" and "Bring Him Home" and "Music of the Night." Spectacle won't compensate for inert characters or pointless songs or lame dialogue. It's not what inspires us to return to the theater over and over again, no matter how disappointing the last musical was. And yet, it's worth asking: Was there some 8-year-old falling in love with Tarzan while I was sitting in the theater unmoved? Will he or she turn into a Man in Chair someday, with a treasured old CD of the show, recognizing that it was drivel but dotty about it nonetheless? And won't the rest of us completely understand?

Sylviane Gold has written about theater for Newsday and The New York Times.