When "Monty Python’s Spamalot” opens on Broadway in New York in March, the Internet company Yahoo will be mentioned on stage. A can of Spam also makes a cameo appearance. Spam will even be on sale during intermission in a special edition honey-grail flavor.

Based on the 1975 film “Monty Python and the Holy Grail,” “Spamalot” tells the story of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table and their sacred quest for the Holy Grail. To help pay for the show, the producers went on their own gallant pursuit: forging partnerships with Yahoo and Hormel Foods, maker of Spam.

While corporate-arts partnerships are not new, onstage product placement may be the hottest act on Broadway. The product placement in “Spamalot” is one example of Broadway’s embrace of commercial products on stage this season. A Veuve Clicquot champagne bottle appears in several scenes of “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels,” and a can of Turtle Wax sits onstage for the first act of “Good Vibrations,” a new musical featuring tunes by the Beach Boys.

“Scenic designers have been putting products in shows for a long time," said Susan Lee of Serino Coyne, a theatrical advertising company. “It’s just now that producers and marketing people are looking to develop better relationships with corporate America as a result of it.”

In a party scene in Broadway’s “Bombay Dreams,” which closed Jan. 1, a waiter carried a tray with a bottle of Bombay Sapphire gin and several martinis. These unique “Bombay Dream” martinis were sold at the theater’s bar and at nearby restaurants.

“We looked for an appropriate place in the play that would be flattering both to the play and to the product,” said Jolie DeFeis, president of Sugartown Creative, which works with Bombay Sapphire.

“It’s a great way for productions to keep their costs down and also a great way for the companies to get their products out there,” said Kara Medoff, producer of the new off-Broadway production “Modern Orthodoxy.”

A Bang and Olufsen stereo appears in “Modern Orthodoxy,” accompanied by a verbal mention of the product. Medoff said she contacted Bang and Olufsen because a joke in the script cited the company.

“We were hoping that, as in the movies, we would have companies offering to pay us for the privilege of their product use,” Mendoff said. But Bang and Olufsen was willing to donate the product only in exchange for the mention in the play.

Product placement is not limited to New York theater. Last year, a production of “Ain’t Misbehavin” at the Actors Theatre in Louisville, Ky., featured onstage seating at tables with lamps made from Jack Daniels bottles. Brown-Forman, the maker of Jack Daniels, also created a special drink for the show—and other shows during the season—that were served at the theater’s bar.

“It certainly was not inappropriate to have those little lamps on the cafe tables on the bar,” said Jim Seacat, the theater’s communications director. “It was certainly in line with the world of the play.”

Theaters in other cities are using similar means to achieve financial viability. The National Corporate Theater Fund, an association of not-for-profit theatres—including the Long Wharf in New Haven, Conn., the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Mass., and the Old Globe in San Diego—hired Seven 2 Sports Marketing in Andover, Mass., to attract corporate sponsorship.

“High end marketers, who are very protective of their brands, want to be associated with the arts,” said Stuart Layne, president of Seven 2 Sports and a former marketing vice president for the Boston Celtics.

Since theater audiences are considered affluent and educated, Layne’s focus is on luxury brands like fashion companies, fashion retailers, high-end department stores, luxury cars, jewelry, cosmetics and electronics.

Marshall Field’s department store was a major corporate sponsor of the Chicago Goodman Theatre’s 2004 production of “Crowns,” a musical that celebrates black women and their church hats. During the production, Marshall Field’s installed a hat display in the theater lobby, and at the opening night party, models circulated in fancy hats, Layne said.

Some critics say corporate influence is too pervasive in the theatrical world. “It thwarts the artistic integrity and it dements it,” said Hamilton Clancy, artistic director of The Drilling Company, a not-for-profit theater group in New York.

Clancy said he realized long ago that the best way for a theater to make money would be to have commercials at intermission, but he knew such corporate sponsorship would limit provocative artistic endeavors. He worries that more producers might succumb to this type of commercialization.

Other insiders think commercialization can go only so far before it is checked. “I think most directors and set designers are only going to allow so much subliminal placement," said Peter Trump, educational coordinator at the Town Hall theater in New York. “If it becomes too obvious, it'll take away from the play.”

“Where it would get tricky is if the sponsors interest in getting their product into the play affected the choice of the play,” said Bruce Whitacre, director of the National Corporate Theater Fund. “Or if there was a requirement that the play script be changed to introduce a product.”

Gary Steuer of the Arts & Business Council in New York says he does not think the theater will ever reach that point. “For the most part we strike the right balance,” he said. “I don’t think you’ll ever see a situation where you’ll walk in to see a show and you’ll see a series of corporate ads flipping by on the stage before the curtain goes up.”