I would like to begin my highly influential tips for the winners of this season’s Tony Awards with heartfelt congratulations to Dolly Parton.

Dolly has been nominated for Best Score of a Musical for the music and lyrics of 9 to 5. She isn’t going to win. I just think Dolly’s amazing.

On a less happy note, it’s arguable that the members of the Tony Award nominating committee should resign en masse. By failing to hand even a single nomination to Ian Rickson’s raved-over production of The Seagull, starring the outstanding Kristin Scott Thomas, either the doddering Tony committee has a lamentably short memory or it doesn’t know diddly from Dolly.

Four of its five Best Actress nominees are from just two plays: Marcia Gay Harden and Hope Davis, God of Carnage; Janet McTeer and Harriet Walter, Mary Stuart. The fifth is Jane Fonda as the valiant terminally ill heroine of 33 Variations.

No room, then, for The Seagull as Best Revival—and not for Ms. Thomas’ supreme Arkadina nor Carey Mulligan’s phenomenal performance as Nina for the Best Featured Actress category.

Twenty-five years ago in the West End, I first saw the amazing Natasha Richardson onstage: She was an ingenue then, playing the ingenue actress Nina to the Arkadina of her mother, Vanessa Redgrave. Her Nina was kissed by God and, for me, the performance has been the benchmark for the role ever since. It’s the highest compliment to say of Carey Mulligan that her blazing talent, her attack and dreaminess, reminded me of the 20-year-old Natasha Richardson.

Best Actress in a Play
Between Marcia Gay Harden and Janet McTeer-Up-the-Stage. Watch out for the heavily campaigning Jane Fonda.

Will win: Marcia Gay Harden

 

Best Featured Actress in a Play
Between the beloved first lady of Broadway, Angela Lansbury, for her dottily irresistible Madame Arcati in the mediocre revival of Noël Coward’s Blithe Spirit, and the amazing Amanda Root for her hilariously exact portrait of British middle-class bossiness and bristling resentment in The Norman Conquests.

Will win: Angela Lansbury

 

Best Featured Actor in a Play
It’s a pity that, in another serious lapse by the nominating committee, John Goodman didn’t receive a nomination for the best work of his career as the sensational Pozzo in the revival of Waiting for Godot.

Will win: Roger Robinson, Joe Turner’s Come and Gone

 

If there were a best ensemble award—like the Olivier Awards have in London—the extraordinary all-British cast of The Norman Conquests would be duking it out with the extraordinary, starry all-American cast of God of Carnage. It would be a close and exciting call—and there would have been room for many other nominees in several categories.

 

Best Actor in a Play
A split vote between James Gandolfini and Jeff Daniels of God of Carnage. I wouldn’t rule out Mr. Gandolfini, however. I wrote of Geoffrey Rush, nominated for Exit the King, that he’s giving one of the finest virtuoso performances I’ve ever seen—but Ionesco’s absurdist romp about mortality tends to put him in the rarefied high-culture category of “He’s wonderful—but What Does It All Mean?” Then again, the gifted Raúl Esparza of Speed-the-Plow could win, though he’s in danger of becoming the Susan Lucci of the Tonys.

Will win: Geoffrey Rush

The Award for Best Play

A shoe-in. Neil LaBute’s Reasons to Be Pretty has struggled to find an audience. The late Horton Foote’s admired Dividing the Estate closed too long ago for Tony voters to have seen it. The best new play of the season—this year’s Pulitzer Prize winner, Ruined, by Lynn Nottage—isn’t eligible. (It’s an Off Broadway production.) Which leaves 33 Variations, the Lifetime disaster movie of the week (with a dash of Amadeus for amateur musicologists), competing with the commercial hit of the season, Yasmina Reza’s 80-minute breeze of a boulevard comedy of ill manners, God of Carnage, which the pretentious Ms. Reza mistakes for Kierkegaard.

Will win: God of Carnage

 

Best Actor in a Musical.

In its wisdom, the nominating committee has also ruled that Tony voters need see only one of the three boys who play Billy in Billy Elliot for all three of them to win a collective Tony as Best Actor in a Musical. When you’ve seen one, you’ve seen ’em all.

Will win: David Alvarez, Trent Kowalik and Kiril Kulish, Billy Elliot

 

Best Revival

The new Billy Elliot rule does not apply, however, to the revival of Alan Ayckbourn’s trilogy of plays, The Norman Conquests, which requires voters to swear on the holy bible of St. Ethel that they’ve seen all three. But the Tony for Best Revival usually goes to Lincoln Center, which makes everybody feel good about themselves except me. The Flintstones Waiting for Godot isn’t a strong contender. There’s no nomination for the admired—and now departed—Desire Under the Elms. The battle for Best Play Revival is therefore a close call between The Norman Conquests and Lincoln Center’s Joe Turner’s Come and Gone.

Will win: The Norman Conquests

 

Best Director of a Play

Will win: Matthew Warchus, the most gifted director of farce on either side of the Atlantic, for The Norman Conquests

 

Best Musical?

Will win: Shock! Billy Elliot

 

Best Director of a Musical
Another shock!

Will win: Stephen Daldry, Billy Elliot!

 

Best Costume, Best Set Design

Prepare yourselves for Billy Elliot all night. The British mega-musical, which created the showbiz first of coal miners dancing merrily in tutus, will sweep everything in its category (including best peanuts). The only exception I can imagine is Best Costume, and possibly Best Set Design, for Shrek. (Green is good.)

 

Best Actress in a Musical

Will win: Alice Ripley for her suicidally depressive heroine in Next to Normal

 

Best Revival of a MusicaL

Finally, the Tony for Best Revival of a Musical is between the tougher, bilingual new production of West Side Story, directed by the always modest Arthur Laurents; and the vibrant, nice, clean Brazilian wax production of Hair, directed by Diane Paulus.

Let the sunshine in!

Will win, must win: Hair, beloved tribal love-rock musical of my generation!

jheilpern@observer.com