NEW YORK -- I recently heard somebody ask, innocently enough, "do they write new musicals anymore?"

Naive the question may be, but you can see where it comes from. The canon of the American musical is so grand that the casual observer might consider it closed, not noticing the annual handful of new work that competes for entry.

But it takes a lot of time, money, skill, perseverance and luck to launch a new musical. And the established titles don't go away. So witness this year's Broadway, where the nominees for the Tony Award for best revival are "Guys and Dolls," "West Side Story," "Hair" and "Pal Joey" -- a Greatest Hits from several generations. Even in a good year, you would expect new musicals to measure up.

As it is, the nominees for new musical are "Next to Normal," "Rock of Ages," "Billy Elliot, The Musical" and "Shrek The Musical." As the final two labels suggest, they started as non-musical movies because familiar names sell better.

This spring has seen one other new musical with a pre-sold movie title: "9 to 5: The Musical." It didn't get a best musical nomination, having to settle for nominations for score, choreography and Allison Janney (lead) and Marc Kudisch (featured). Still, on the Post-Gazette's recent ShowPlane to Broadway, "9 to 5" gave me more pleasure than revivals of two all-time greats, "West Side Story" and Guys and Doll."

The fourth musical on the ShowPlane agenda was "Billy Elliot" (which I reviewed in November and in London in 2006), which should easily win the new musical Tony. Best musical revival is a harder call, so I'll split the difference between "West Side Story" and "Guys and Dolls," both solid but not extraordinary, by predicting "Hair," which I haven't yet seen.

If you've seen the movie, you know what to expect, even though the book had to be re-worked to be stage-worthy and make room for Dolly Parton's score. (Her only song in the movie was the title number.) It may well be that I enjoyed this more than the two famous revivals because my expectation was lower, but enjoy it I did.

Just as you'd hope, "9 to 5" is a comedy that starts in a recognizable workplace, circa 1979 (era of typewriters, pre-computer), and develops into a giddy fantasy/farce of justified revenge. I wouldn't even call it feminist, because the boss (Kudisch) is such a male chauvinist monster that anyone would root for his overthrow.

More interesting is the by-play among the women. Busty blond Doralee (CMU grad Megan Hilty, in the Parton role) is stereotyped by astringent Violet (Janney, the Lily Tomlin role) and prim Judy (Stephanie J. Block, the Jane Fonda role), who assume she's sleeping with the boss -- evidence that tyrannies rely on dividing the tyrannized.

Once they straighten that out with an evening of pot-smoking (it is 1979), the fun begins, the boss being held captive while the women race to uncover his sins and re-make the workplace. Parton's country-western inflected score is pleasant enough, and Joe Mantello directs with a lively comic touch.

Hilty is a gritty, feisty sweetheart as Doralee. Janney's Violet, her role expanded into the true lead, dominates with her tart panache. Block never quite finds herself as the faintly nerdy Judy, the least defined role, but Kudisch lets out all the stops as the swaggering villain brought low.

However it does in New York, this is a musical meant to tour.

At the Marquis Theatre, 1535 Broadway; 1-800-982-2787.

My expectations were high, with all director Arthur Laurents' talk of intensifying the danger, complete with great swatches of Spanish dialogue and lyrics. The result is definitely more lyrical than dangerous -- a sweetly sad "West Side Story," not one to get your heart racing.

Nor does it re-think the famous original choreography by Jerome Robbins and Peter Gennaro, here reproduced by Joey McNeely, but that's just as well. Those kinetic images have become as much a part of the show as Leonard Bernstein's soaring music and Stephen Sondheim's lyrics, now plaintive, now smart.

There isn't as much Spanish dialogue as I expected, but it does add ethnic verisimilitude. For the two songs rendered in Spanish -- the contrasting "I Feel Pretty" and "A Boy Like That" -- the English lyrics are printed in the program, but no one who knows the show will need them.

Argentinian Josefina Scaglione is a luminescent Maria who develops the iron demanded of her (as of her original, Shakespeare's Juliet). Karen Olivo makes the most of the feisty Anita, and she benefits from one moment of increased brutality, her assault in Doc's drugstore, which turns into raw rape. That Anybodys (CMU grad Tro Shaw) can egg it on is as shocking as anything in the show.

Matt Cavenaugh's Tony has a fine voice but can't break out of the standard Tony trap of not seeming especially consequential, and George Akram's Bernardo is handsome and slick but never very threatening.

At the Palace Theatre, 1564 Broadway; 1-800-982-2787.

Actually, this did exceed my expectations. I knew it couldn't compete with the fabulous Broadway revival of 1992-95, starring Nathan Lane and a gorgeous set and costume design of saturated color, but it surprises by taking a darker route, discovering the whiff of reality within Frank Loesser's inspired cartoon. This is more a matter of the set of soaring steel girders than of the use of Damon Runyon to frame the show at his typewriter

No matter what the approach, "Guys and Dolls" remains one of the top five musical comedies of all time, maybe even No. 1. Aside from the brilliant, sassy score, the chief attraction here is Lauren Graham's wonderfully matter-of-fact, underplayed Miss Adelaide -- and her pulchritudinous Hot Box Girls are pretty great, too.

Oliver Platt's Nathan matches Graham in easy naturalism. Sky and Sarah -- Craig Berko and Kate Jennings Grant -- aren't such stand-outs. There's strength in the supporting nuggets of such as Titus Burgess (Nicely-Nicely), who takes "Sit Down, You're Rockin' the Boat' to a new level of virtuosity.

Maybe this "Guys and Dolls" and "West Side Story" are just examples of Broadway revivals that aren't so impressive to us from in the provinces, where we see solid revivals all the time.

At the Nederlander Theatre, 208 West 41st Street; 1-800-982-2787.