“The juggernaut shows are no longer based on teary epics or lugubrious legends or dark poems. The singing gloom-and-doom characters of the Great White Way — the bedraggled street urchins and guilt-ridden Vietnam War veterans and weather-beaten felines — have packed up their dressing rooms. One formidable survivor, that spectral opera-house haunter in the half-mask, is looking ever lonelier. Today, the hits are all about tee-hee and ha-ha and oh-ho-ho. What packs ’em in is hilarity in major chords. Monty Python, Mel Brooks, sex-crazed puppets, Harvey Fierstein in a triple-D cup: These are the new aristocrats of Broadway. Types with a thing for the funny bone.”