Producers in search of audience appeal don’t seem to care. And if you look at the weekly grosses for the derided “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark,” you can see why. (Strictly speaking “Spider-Man” was not a movie adaptation, but surely the success of the movies had a lot to do with his arrival on Broadway.) Squeezed by the skyrocketing cost of producing a new musical — the average is now in the neighborhood of $8 million — producers are looking for popular brands that guarantee a healthy advance and a ready-made marketing campaign. I can only pray that in their desperation they don’t start turning to other forms of mass entertainment for inspiration: “Angry Birds: The Musical” is within the realm of possibility. (Maybe the folks from Cirque du Soleil could be involved?)

Well, you might argue, if Broadway can no longer be relied upon to renew itself with fresh material, at least we can channel the glory of the past. Revivals of Stephen Sondheim musicals can be confidently expected almost once a season, like Puccini or Verdi war horses at the opera, and I see no shame in that.

But this season’s revivals tell an almost equally dispiriting story. The fall opened on a bright note with the stylish, incisively acted production of Mr. Sondheim and James Goldman’s “Follies,” but what followed seemed to bear out that great musical’s note of elegy for a vanished world of musical enchantment. The admirable attempt to revivify the Alan Jay Lerner-Burton Lane score for “On a Clear Day You Can See Forever” with a book newly fertilized by a gender switch for its heroine turned out to be a sad fizzle.

Jesus was crucified twice this season on Broadway, in the frantically peppy, with-it revival of Stephen Schwartz and John-Michael Tebelak’s “Godspell,” which was blanked by the Tony nominators, and in Des McAnuff’s alternately sleek and silly production of Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice’s “Jesus Christ Superstar,” which reaped just two nominations, for the compelling Judas Iscariot of Josh Young and for best musical revival. Although both shows drew audiences with sentimental affection for the originals, neither was revealed as a classic worthy of serious reconsideration.

“Superstar” is competing for the revival Tony with another show by Mr. Lloyd Webber and Mr. Rice that exposed its flaws upon a second viewing. Their blockbuster “Evita” was presented in a lavish but lifeless production that imported the show’s London star, Elena Roger, as a rather shrill, shrinking Eva Peron, and Ryan Seacrest — oops, I mean Ricky Martin — as a bizarrely chipper Che.