A tiny off-Loop theater troupe called Cardiff Giant went under in Chicago, got resurrected in NYC, and then hit it huge with Urinetown.

As with Mary Zimmerman’s “Metamorphoses,” the success of “Urinetown” is firm evidence that the kind of original work that goes on here in storefronts (even unlicensed storefronts) every season is the same kind of work that wins major awards elsewhere and is hailed in New York as revolutionary even 10 years after its Chicago creation. And yet had “Urinetown” become a fringe Chicago musical — which it was inches away from becoming — it likely would have run here for a month and then sunk without a trace in a city that still seems woefully unable to propel its homegrown properties to national prominence and longevity — unless those artists involved ship out for the coasts and start all over.