All right, "A Catered Affair" wasn't even nominated, but this spare yet emotion-drenched musical should have been a contender. Listen to the newly released cast recording if you have any doubts. If "Heights" stumbles, "Passing Strange" could get the nod. ACTOR-PLAY Will win: Mark Rylance, "Boeing-Boeing." Should win: Mark Rylance, "Boeing-Boeing." The main competition for Rylance, who plays a delightfully nerdy visitor to Paris in this 1960s sex farce, is Patrick Stewart, who portrayed the Scottish king in "Macbeth." But comedy is harder than tragedy any day. ACTRESS-PLAY Will win: Deanna Dunagan, "August." Should win: Deanna Dunagan, "August." Mother knows best, particularly if she is an unrepentant harridan such as the one Dunagan brilliantly pulls off in Letts' Pulitzer Prize winner. But Amy Morton, who portrays Dunagan's most acidulous daughter, is a possibility, too. ACTOR-MUSICAL
Will win: Paulo Szot, "South Pacific." Should win: Tom Wopat, "A Catered Affair." Szot is the Cheyenne Jackson (who, unfortunately, wasn't even nominated) of opera. He brings a new chemistry to the relationship between Emile de Becque and nurse Nellie Forbush in this golden oldie. Before he was television's Luke Duke, Wopat was a first-rate, musical-theater performer. And he reconfirms it in "Affair." ACTRESS-MUSICAL Will win: Patti LuPone, "Gypsy." Should win: Patti LuPone, "Gypsy." Only Hamlet is a bigger theater role than Rose, the ultimate stage mother in what is possibly the greatest of all American musicals. LuPone climbs this Mount Everest with surprising ferocity. And she never appears out of breath. REVIVAL-PLAY Will win: "Boeing-Boeing." Should win: "Boeing-Boeing." The play isn't one for the ages. Heck, it isn't even one for a season, but director Matthew Warchus makes sure every laugh is nailed in this most physical of farces. REVIVAL-MUSICAL Will win: "South Pacific." Should win: "South Pacific." No expense has been spared - including using a 30-piece orchestra - in bringing this Rodgers and Hammerstein-Joshua Logan classic back to Broadway. And the opulent expenditure pays off. DIRECTOR-PLAY Will win: Anna D. Shapiro, "August." Should win: Anna D. Shapiro, "August." Actually, the entire cast of "August: Osage County" should get a collective Tony Award. And it was Shapiro who shepherded this fine troupe of actors from Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre Company to Broadway. DIRECTOR-MUSICAL Will win: Bartlett Sher, "South Pacific." Should win: Bartlett Sher, "South Pacific." Sher gives this lavish Lincoln Center Theater production an emotional grounding rarely achieved in musical theater.
