alive & kicking; After one of the best Broadway seasons in recent memory, Adam Green predicts the winners of this month's Tony Awards.

Byline: Adam Green

Early in act one of Monty Python's Spamalot, the raucous musical entertainment at the Shubert, a medieval-peasant type wheels out a cart piled with the corpses of plague victims and shouts, "Bring out your dead!" One slightly decomposed-looking chap, about to be tossed onto the heap, suddenly pops up and launches into a peppy song-and-dance routine whose refrain is "I am not dead yet!" It is a blissfully absurd moment, one that perfectly captures the past year on Broadway.

Throughout the fall and winter, things looked bleak for new musicals. Dracula, Brooklyn, and Little Women were quickly followed by Good Vibrations, which answered the burning question: How does one drain all the vitality from the Beach Boys' greatest hits? Then along came spring, and with it four nifty shows. Two of them, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, a sly crowd pleaser about con men on the French Riviera, and The Light in the Piazza, a delicate, off-kilter love story set in Florence, feature terrific scores by youngish songwriters. (Adam Guettel's ravishing music for Piazza should win for Best Original Score, though David Yazbek's breezily vulgar, pop-inflected Scoundrels tunes might be more Tony-voter-friendly.) And The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, a sprightly ode to the vicissitudes of tween-hood, is loaded with charm. But the winner for Best Musical, I suspect, will be the flawed but hilarious Spamalot, which, under the masterful hand of Mike Nichols (a sure winner for Best Director of a Musical), turns rude silliness into an affirmation of life.

Forget Gary Beach in the amiable La Cage aux Folles and B. D. Wong in the disappointing revival of Pacific Overtures. When it comes to Best Actor in a Musical, the real contenders are from Spamalot and Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. In this corner, we have David (The Pants-Soiling Knight) Hyde Pierce, Hank (The Gay Crusader) Azaria, and Tim (Don't Mention The Rocky Horror Picture Show) Curry, who gives a splendid comic turn as the stouthearted, if not overly bright, King Arthur. Their opponents: Charmin' John Lithgow, the 2002 Tony champ for his performance in Sweet Smell of Success, and his hyperkinetic costar Norbert Leo Butz. In last season's Wicked, Butz looked listless and punchy, but this time he comes out swinging and gives a lovable, shamelessly over-the-top performance that is the winner by a knockout.

Last year, the Best Actress in a Musical category featured four superb performers: Donna Murphy, Tonya Pinkins, Kristin Chenoweth, and Idina Menzel. (Menzel, as Wicked's ballad-belting green witch, prevailed.) This year, it's more of a mixed bag. Christina Applegate, who broke her foot during the Chicago tryout of Sweet Charity, will probably be nominated for sheer pluck. Sherie Rene Scott will, too, for her winsome turn as a seemingly innocent shill in Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. My guess is that the prize will go to The Light in the Piazza's Victoria Clark, who captures the bittersweet heroism of a mother learning to let go with unassuming grace. Kelli O'Hara gives a lovely performance as her daughter, but the odds-on favorite for Best Featured Actress in a Musical is Sara Ramirez, whose vocal pyrotechnics and gleeful scenery-chewing bring down the house in Spamalot.

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