U2's Bono and the Edge created Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, but staged it in the US. Why doesn't this nation of musicians and playwrights stage more shows?

I've sat through some jaw-dropping performances in Dublin recently – and some truly dreadful ones (but let's not mention the war). However, I could perform an angry tap routine about the lack of one kind of genre: the musical. While most theatre reviewers might dread the thought of sitting through yet another cute children's chorus/tragic death/cute dog/tear-jerking romantic number/weirdo living in the roof (delete as applicable), I crave the cheesy theatrical release only a musical can offer.

Yet sadly our island seems to be unable – or unwilling – to write, or indeed produce, their own works from the genre; instead we seem happy to rely on the imported touring productions from the UK. I find this rather baffling.

We aren't lacking in raw materials, after all. Aren't we the country that brought you Enya, Sinead O'Connor, Westlife and U2? It's true that Bono and the Edge embarked on the ill-fated Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, but they chose to stage it in the US (actually, on reflection, maybe a blessing in disguise). And it's not as if we're short of experimental playwrights, innovative directors or competent performers.

I wonder if our reticence springs from snobbery, a view that musicals are perhaps less artistically sound. We have performance art pieces, physical theatre in spades, new writing mushrooming up in all sorts of small places across the city, but, alas, not much in the way of jazz hands or sequinned costumes. Director/writer Wayne Jordan stuck his head above the parapet with Ellamenope Jones, a new musical at the Project Arts Centre in December 2010; while it had ambition, it lacked finesse. Still, he should still be lauded for giving it a go. Since then, however, nada.

On the practical front, lack of suitable locations has been cited as the reason why both foreign and homegrown producers are unwilling to invest. With the opening of the Grand Canal Theatre, though, this argument has been shot to pieces: it's got state-of-the-art facilities and a location that would envy the West End in its appeal to tourists and natives alike.

I guess like everything in Ireland at the minute – and how tiresome this has become – money is the ultimate stumbling block. To say that funds are tight here is like saying that Andrew Lloyd Webber likes tinkering about on a piano. But what about Willy Russell's Blood Brothers, which started out as a modest production for young people, or Grease, which evolved into the Broadway success from a play with an amateur cast performing in an experimental Chicago theatre?

At a touring production of Annie back in September I saw a true Dub skinhead dad prance down the stairs of the Gaiety theatre with his little daughter as both sang at the top of their lungs "Tomorrow, tomorrow, I'll love ya tomorrow." Surely we need more of this – today.