The magic of theater and magic as theater are at the core of an entertaining, if insubstantial, biodrama, Death and Harry Houdini, created and performed by Chicago’s House Theatre, currently at the Adrienne Arsht Center in Miami.

Houdini, the renowned illusionist and escape artist of the early 20th century, became obsessed with the spirit world in the hope of pulling off his greatest trick -- escaping death. Mortality issues are at the forefront of Nathan Allen’s take on Houdini, though they are upstaged by the numerous classic feats of magic that are salted throughout the play.

The script would have been helped by a more distinct viewpoint on Houdini, but even that would likely have taken a backseat to such deftly performed stunts as the quick-change metamorphosis illusion, a wince-inducing walk across a bed of broken bottle glass and the grand finale -- an escape from being shackled and suspended upside down in a water torture tower.

Like last season’s The Sparrow, also by House Theatre at the Arsht’s Carnival Studio space, the company again shows itself to be a nimble, young troupe brimming with creativity. Although its strength is in its ensemble work, Death and Harry Houdini requires a star presence with very specific sleight-of-hand skills and underwater lung power.

It certainly has them in the charismatic and wily Dennis Watkins, who not only plays Houdini but is credited with designing the magic effects in the show. Many of the illusions do rely on specially rigged props that most actors could be taught to master, but during the evening Watkins also excels with playing card manipulation, that barefoot walk across glass shards and the swallowing of several razor blades which he ties together with thread in his mouth.

How does he do these things? Very well.

Understandably, the rest of the show cannot measure up to the magic, though the cast sings and plays various instruments quite capably. Carolyn Defrin is particularly endearing as Houdini’s wife, Bess, who accepts she will always be less important to her hubby than his sourpuss mother (Marika Mashburn), his magic and his joust with death. Shawn Pfautsch is appealing in the underwritten role of Harry’s little brother, Theo, and Johnny Arena is aptly nefarious as the proceeding’s Ringmaster.

Playwright Allen also directs the production, an act of choreography that keeps the cast in near-constant motion and has the audience often holding its breath. Death and Harry Houdini is the kind of show that requires technical perfection and gets it from House Theatre.

Nevertheless, it is hard to shake the impression that the play could have gone deeper with its exploration of Houdini and what drove him to risk so much so often. Then the theatrical experience might have been a satisfying drama with some magic tricks, instead of the other way around.

DEATH AND HARRY HOUDINI, Arsht Center Carnival Studio Theatre, 1300 Biscayne Blvd., Miami. Through Sunday, May 20. Tickets: $40-$50. Call: (305) 949-6722.

As with all awards programs, but probably more so with Broadway’s Tony Awards, the announcement of nominations says more about who was snubbed than who got the nod.

In a so-so season on Broadway -- particularly for new musicals -- the good news is that there were enough productions to fill the categories and still leave enough major names off the nominations lists to get tongues wagging.

Among those who came up short when the Tony Award noms were read off Tuesday morning were Ricky Martin (Evita), Matthew Broderick (Nice Work If You Can Get It), Bernadette Peters (Follies), Stacy Keach (Other Desert Cities), Raul Esparza (Leap of Faith) and Tyne Daly (Master Class). Maybe they can all get together at a bar across from the Beacon Theatre on June 10, when the Tonys will be given out, and have an alternative party.

Somewhat surprising -- at least to me -- was the strong showing of the musical Once, which leads the field with 11 nominations. It will be competing for best musical, book, direction, choreography, orchestrations, three design categories and its stars (Steve Kazee and Cristin Milioti). Its score, which chiefly comes from the 2006 movie, was previously ruled ineligible for a Tony.

“Arthouse musical” Once will be going head-to-head against the purely commercial Newsies, also based on a movie, which still looks to be the front-runner for best musical despite pulling in only eight nominations. For starters, it has the marketing muscle of the Disney organization behind it and probably the sizeable voting bloc of national presenters, who want a mainstream hit for their theaters for the future.

Filling out the category is the “new” Gershwin jukebox musical, Nice Work If You Can Get It, which was generally well received when it opened last week, and Leap of Faith, which was not. In fact, it was the most poorly reviewed musical in memory to still cop a best musical nomination. Presumably the nominating committee figured it needed to shut out such even worse -- though popular -- fare as Spider Man: Turn Off the Dark and Ghost: The Musical.

Spider Man did fly off with mentions for scenic and costume design, while Ghost will be in the running for featured actress (Da’Vine Joy Randolph) and scenic and lighting design.

As further proof that it was a bum year for new musicals, the best score category was filled with the incidental songs from two plays -- Peter and the Starcatcher and One Man, Two Guvnors -- along with Newsies and Once.

Since the Tonys are largely a sales tool for Broadway, nominators are discouraged from recognizing shows that have already closed. Nevertheless, last fall’s revival of Stephen Sondheim’s Follies has a strong showing on Tuesday with eight nominations. It leads the field for best revival and was named for cast members Jan Maxwell, Danny Burstein, Ron Raines and Jayne Houdyshell, but not for its director, Eric Schaeffer.

Its main competition in the revival category would seem to be the controversial remounting of Porgy and Bess (10 nominations). Also in the race are two wanly received revivals, Evita and Jesus Christ Superstar.

It was a far better Broadway season for plays than it was for musicals and the field for best play looks to be a tight one. The clever prequel to Peter Pan, Peter and the Starcatcher, has the numerical edge with nine nominations. It got nods for best play, score, featured performers (Christian Borle, Celia Keenan-Bolger), direction and design (scenery, costumes, lighting, sound).

Its prime competition is expected to be Jon Robin Baitz’s Other Desert Cities (five nominations), including leading actress (Stockard Channing), featured actress (Judith Light), scenic and lighting design, but, surprisingly, not for director Joe Mantello. Also vying for the best play Tony are two other strong works, Clybourne Park and Venus in Fur, both probable also-rans. The very funny British import, One Man, Two Guvnors, petitioned to be considered a revival -- of the 18^th-century farce, Servant of Two Masters. It was turned down and then failed to make the cut for best play.

The prohibitive favorite for best revival is the much admired Mike Nichols production of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman. The play won the Tony when it premiered in 1949, and again for revivals in 1984 and 1999. A fourth win for the classic drama would set a Tony Award record.

Trying to stop that from happening is the still running political play The Best Man and two that have closed, Master Class and Wit. Philip Seymour Hoffman is certainly the front-runner for best actor in a play for his take on Salesman’s Willy Loman, unless James Corden’s knockabout performance in One Man, Two Guvnors can overtake him.

The Tony Awards will be broadcast on Sunday, June 10, on the CBS network.

Just before catching a plane back to South Florida, I was able to squeeze in one final play -- a matinee of David Ives’ kinky, amusing Venus in Fur, starring Broadway’s latest “it” girl, Nina Arianda.

Last season, she made her Broadway debut in Born Yesterday, filling the legendary shoes of Judy Holliday quite credibly. Now, she returns to a new work, a darkly comic two-character piece that she originated a year and a half ago off-Broadway.

Arianda plays an actress who bursts into a drab rehearsal room at the end of a day in which a writer-director (Hugh Dancy) has seen a parade of dreadfully untalented woman audition for his play, based on a period novel by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, the father of masochism. Ives’ version is a series of power plays, role reversals and seductions, as the actress and her potential employer jump in and out of character in the play-within-a-play, as Arianda uses her feminine wiles and skimpy, leather outfit for their intended effect.

The play is a major leap forward for Ives, best known for light comedy sketches like All in the Timing. Still, the production belongs to Arianda, who should certainly cop her second straight Tony nomination when they are announced this Tuesday morning.

So that’s it: 12 shows in nine days. Ultimately, an above-average season for plays and a woefully disappointing one for new musicals. I’ll review the season in detail after the dust settles from the Tony nominations.

Having spoken with composer Frank Wildhorn about his upcoming tour and Broadway revival of Jekyll & Hyde, I met Friday with the show's star, Constantine Maroulis, the American Idol sensation who went on to headline Rock of Ages (and has a small role in this summer's film version with Tom Cruise).

We met at an Eastside diner and while we chatted, I could see out of the corner of my eye members of the wait staff gawking at Maroulis.

Although he is a rock star celebrity, it was refreshing to hear him talk with affection and reverence for the musical theater, a love nurtured as a kid from watching the movie of West Side Story. Spending time with him has definitely increased my interest in the Jekyll & Hyde revival which, according to Wildhorn, should take Maroulis’s career "to a new level."

In the afternoon, I interviewed Anthony Lyn -- the tour director for Les Miserables (coming to the Kravis Center next month) and Mary Poppins (coming next season). We almost got together Thursday, but hadn't connected because of mixed signals.

With the creative teams for both shows long since returned to England, Lyn has overseen the assembly and maintenance of both tours. Therefore, he has to deal with the frequent requests for interviews, which he accommodates with quotable good humor. Presumably waxing articulately about Mary Poppins is no more painful for him than rehearsing the near-constantly changing parade of youngsters in the show, which he headed off to do again after our talk at a theater district Dean & DeLuca's.

Friday evening I saw what should be the hands-down Tony Award-winning play of the season, Jon Robin Baitz’s Other Desert Cities, a major work that just missed getting the Pulitzer Prize earlier this month. As much as I enjoyed Peter and the Starcatcher and One Man, Two Guvnors, neither one will be confused for anything profound.

Baitz’s play, on the other hand, is a rich, substantial drama about a Palm Springs family plunged into turmoil and recriminations by the arrival of a grown daughter. She brings with her a manuscript of a memoir that will imminently expose a dark, buried secret involving her deceased older brother. As layered and complex as the script is, it plays even better, thanks to the performances of Stockard Channing, Stacy Keach and Judith Light, under Joe Mantello’s direction.

It is heartening to see such a play thriving on Broadway, where it has been playing since November. In an earlier era, an exciting piece of theater like this would almost certainly go on tour. Instead, it falls to regional resident theaters, like Coral Gables’ Actors’ Playhouse, which has already announced plans to produce Other Desert Cities in its 2012-2013 season.

Thursday morning, I schlepped way downtown, near the former site of the World Trade Center where a steady stream of people arrived to view the new 9-11 memorial, for an interview.

In a nearby high-hrise apartment lives composer Frank Wildhorn, whose cult hit Jekyll & Hyde is about to get a re-conceived major revival starring Constantine Maroulis (American Idol, Rock of Ages) in the fall, with a stop at the Kravis Center.

Although I did my homework on Wildhorn, what I didn't know is that he grew up in Hollywood ... Florida ... and his mom currently lives in Delray Beach. He claims the latter is why his two most recent musicals (Wonderland and Bonnie & Clyde, both fast flops on Broadway) started life in Florida, in Sarasota. (“It's all about Mom,” he declares.)

In addition to the specifics of this upcoming Jekyll & Hyde revival, to be directed by Jeff Calhoun (Newsies), we spoke about why Broadway sees Wildhorn as a pop music outsider. It hurts, he concedes, but he also reels off a few musicals currently running around the globe (Carmen, Count of Monte Cristo) that are entertaining audiences far from insular, judgmental Broadway. Wildhorn may not have Broadway's respect, but he has created his own empire of shows and is getting the last laugh over his critics.

In the late afternoon, I went to meet and talk to Anthony Lyn, the tour director of Mary Poppins, also Kravis-bound. But a scheduling snafu left me waiting for him for a half-hour before I had to leave. Text messages later explained that the publicist never confirmed the interview with him, but we decided to give it a try again Friday.

The day ended with a bang, though, seeing the wildly acclaimed laughfest One Man, Two Guvnors, an import from the venerable National Theatre of Great Britain, a knockabout farce with a classy -- if tenuous -- basis in Carlo Goldoni’s 18^th-century commedia dell'arte staple, The Servant of Two Masters.

You need to know nothing of the source material, whose paper-thin plot and conflict are well summarized by the title. At the production’s center is an inspired farceur, glandular James Corden (The History Boys), who smashes the fourth wall by embarassing several audience members, (Spoiler: Some of whom are cast members).

Corden is lightning fast with ad-libs, even if some of them are scripted. Next week, when Tony nominations are announced, Corden will surely grab one and, I think, become the front-runner for the award. Still, how voters can possibly compare his performance to, say, Philip Seymour Hoffman’s Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman, is a conundrum.

Corden and his fellow British cast members will only be here for a limited run. They represent the best reason to get on a plane and head to Broadway this season.