You may have read recently that Twyla Tharp is working to develop a new dance musical based on the songs of Bob Dylan. The show, which doesn't have a title yet—let your imagination run wild!—is set to premiere next January at San Diego's Old Globe Theatre.

This is only the latest in a string of such efforts to link the worlds of popular music and legitimate theatre. Let's face it, it's also an effort to pick the pockets of the middle-aged audiences—the Billy Joel musical "Movin' Out" is still going strong on Broadway and comes to the Twin Cities this August. And the field is getting ever more crowded.

Broadway has "All Shook Up" - the Elvis musical and Vegas boasts "We Will Rock You," the Queen tuner. A show based on old Ramones songs opened last year in Australia, and, the year before, London offered "Tonight's the Night" —described as "a Faustian story about a car mechanic who sells his soul to be as cool as Rod Stewart"—and presumably to sing a few of his songs. There's even been "Our House," based on the music of the 1980s ska band "Madness."

What we critics call "jukebox musicals" might seem, on the face of it, to be licenses to print money. But you never can tell. "Mamma Mia!" the ABBA musical and the show that really fired up this craze, sells upwards of $1 million worth of tickets a week on Broadway and the touring version prances giddily across the country.

Meanwhile, the objectively better music of the Beach Boys got stuck in a stink-o-rama of a Broadway show called "Good Vibrations," where it met an end similar to that of the ill-fated Sloop John B.

The problem, I think, is not the quality of music so much than the fact that you can't tell which of these things are real shows and which of them are just ideas for a Saturday Night Live sketch. In the movie, "The Tall Guy" - kind of a sleeper comedy from 1989—Jeff Goldblum gets cast in the title role of a musical version of "The Elephant Man," called "Elephant"—with an exclamation point.

Ridiculous, right? But take a look at the Minnesota Opera's upcoming season. Right up there with "Tosca" and "Don Giovanni" is "Joseph Merrick, the Elephant Man." No exclamation point, but you get the idea.

So…would you believe "Thunder Road"—the Bruce Springsteen musical? Or "Ladies of the Canyon," featuring the music of Joni Mitchell? How about "Strange Magic," the stageplay drawing on the oeuvre of the Electric Light Orchestra? Maybe "Colour My World," bringing the tunes of '70s supergroup Chicago to the stage?

One of theses shows played San Francisco last summer. One has been announced but not yet produced. And two of them, I made up.

Check the State of the Arts for the answer