By Tom Brook In New York

Top names from showbusiness are gathering for the annual Tony Awards in New York on Sunday night.

Broadway's equivalent of the Oscars will be a prizegiving ceremony at the end of a difficult theatre season.

The combined forces of terrorism and economic recession have left their mark on Broadway's fortunes.

The UK has enjoyed Tony success

In the days after 11 September, admissions dipped precipitously.

Although there has been recovery in the past few months, theatre attendance for the current season is off by almost one million from a year ago.

On a brighter note more than 30 shows are currently playing on Broadway, and among them some new artistic triumphs that have turned this year's Tony Awards ceremony into quite a competitive race.

In the best musical category, Thoroughly Modern Millie, a boisterous staging of the 1967 movie set in the Jazz Age, leads the pack with eleven nominations.

A crowd-pleaser and the conventional choice of frontrunner, it is up against the inventive Urinetown.

Tepid reviews

With ten nominations, the latter is a well-received parody that posits a futuristic world in which people have to pay when they go to the lavatory.

An imported production of Mamma Mia packed with Abba songs that crossed the Atlantic earlier in the season is also in the best musical race - as well as being the one nominated show to have become a certifiable Broadway hit.

The other remaining best musical nominee is Sweet Smell of Success, another staging of a Hollywood film, which opened to tepid reviews.

Alan Bates could win for best actor in a play

For the first time in quite a few years there is no British entry in the best play category.

After several seasons in which there has been a chorus of complaints bemoaning the lack of homegrown American works, this year there is plenty to choose from.

Topdog/Underdog, a play chronicling the struggles between two African-American brothers starring Jeffrey Wright and rapper Mos Def is a strong Tony contender.

The play, which embraces hip hop and Greek tragedy, received good reviews and the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

But this new arrival is up against The Goat or Who is Sylvia?, the first new work on Broadway in 20 years from the highly esteemed Edward Albee, the man who wrote the landmark play Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

Strong contender

There's also competition from Metamorphoses, a play based on Ovid's myths, and from Ivan Turgenev's Fortune's Fool starring Britain's Alan Bates.

It is 30 years since Bates was last seen on Broadway and he is widely viewed as a strong contender for the best actor in a play prize.

The best revival category includes a production of Arthur Milller's play The Crucible, set during the Salem Witch Trials, which is in the running with six nominations.

There have been some signs of recovery

The Crucible stars Liam Neeson and it has been staged on Broadway by British director, Sir Richard Eyre.

Also in the best revival race with six nominations is the British import of Noel Coward's Private Lives starring Alan Rickman and Lindsay Duncan.

Both these British actors have earned nominations with performances that have electrified audiences.

A revival of the Royal National Theatre's production Noises Off has also been nominated in the revival category.

Affluent viewers

The Trevor Nunn-directed Oklahoma!, not as well received on Broadway as it was in London, is competing with Broadway legend Stephen Sondheim's Into the Woods in the musical revival category.

Although the Tony Awards ceremony does not enjoy the high overall ratings of the Oscars, it does reach relatively young and affluent viewers, the target audience that Broadway is desperate to reach.

Tourism has not rebounded as strongly as had been hoped and the Tonys telecast is seen as a powerful showcase that will tempt viewers to visit New York and sample a Broadway show.

Although theatre talent will be in the foreground at the awards ceremony the painful aftermath of September 11th still lingers.

Many theatre professionals think it nothing short of miraculous that there has been a Broadway season at all given how much devastation the terrorist attacks wrought, particularly in depressing the volume of tourism-related theatre business.

Diminished audiences

Broadway benefited from publicly funded efforts to revive business, including a special programme in which $2.5m (�1.7m) was spent by the city on theatre tickets, as well as a big advertising campaign orchestrated at a state level.

Many fringe off-Broadway theatres, some located close to the World Trade Center site and badly affected by diminished audiences, are still smarting that they were not helped by these high-profile campaigns to aid mainstream New York theatre.

The theatre community will attempt to put differences aside at Sunday's Tony Awards ceremony and celebrate the artistic triumphs of a challenging season.

A year ago it all seemed very different, Broadway was enjoying ten straight years of breaking box office records and basking in the glory of Mel Brooks' megahit musical The Producers.

That show netted an historic 12 Tony awards and it is still grossing more than $1m (�700,000) a week - much to the satisfaction of its backers.