Twenty years ago, in Palm Beach Shakespeare Festival’s second season, the company took its first crack at The Tempest, the tale of an exiled Milanese duke who seeks revenge on his enemies through sorcery.

Playing young Prince Ferdinand back then was 20-year-old Kevin Crawford, in his first involvement with the play, “back when I could still get away with playing young princes,” he notes.

Now a professor of English and theater at Georgia’s Reinhardt University, Crawford spends his summers in Palm Beach County as artistic director of the Shakespeare Festival and, this year, playing aged Duke Prospero.

As he says of the play, “I think it’s pretty top-drawer, and a crowd-pleaser. The reason it’s been so long since we’ve done it is I did it so many times when I was younger, I got tired of it.”

Still, when it came to choosing a work for the group’s annual Shakespeare-by-the-Sea at Jupiter’s Carlin Park Amphitheatre, Crawford and technical director/scenic designer Daniel Gordon agreed that it was time again for The Tempest. “It’s the 400th anniversary year of the play’s first performance,” reports Crawford, excuse enough for a new production.

While many refer to The Tempest as Shakespeare’s last completed play, Crawford calls it more accurately the Bard’s “final non-collaborative effort for the stage.” The distinction? “He wrote other plays after ‘The Tempest’ with junior company playwrights,” says Crawford. “Like what we now call ‘Henry VIII,’ ‘Two Noble Kinsmen’ and a play based on the life of Sir Thomas More.”

Last script or not, The Tempest feels like a swan song to the theater, for Shakespeare includes numerous concluding statements about stagecraft. Still, Crawford cautions against making too much of it. “Yeah, it’s very easily read that way, but it’s a very romantic notion. That story didn’t get floated around until the late 18th or early 19th century,” he says. “And this play was just perfect for the idea of him saying goodbye to the stage, with such ideas as Prospero breaking his staff is Shakespeare breaking his pen. But he continued to work actively for a number of years after.”

It is also usually taught that Prospero is a stand-in for Shakespeare himself. “I never bought it, but it’s very, very easy to see that,” notes Crawford, whose production will emphasize the dark side of the character. “Prospero really is a despicable man on some levels. He was stupid enough to lose the dukedom in the first place. He does enslave other characters in the play. He makes people think that their children are dead.”

Unlike many Palm Beach Shakespeare Festival shows, which transport the play to offbeat places and times, this Tempest will not be set in a definite locale. “The stage will be mostly bare with a simple series of ramps and platforms,” says Crawford. “It’s not set in the caves of Bora Bora, there is no beach, no water line. I think most 20^th-century productions, post-1950, 1960, have been interested in a post-colonial reading of it: that this is all about white people going to uncharted territory and taking it over, putting their white European stamp on it.

“That’s fine, but that’s definitely not where we’re going with this,” he said.

Prospero is a sorcerer and many modern productions have emphasized magical effects, but Crawford is resisting that impulse, too. “I think the magical effects will mostly be suggested through mime and sound,” he says. “I think there’s something powerful about someone raising their hand and a sound effect. The audience just accepts that he made a lightning strike.”

The simplicity of the production might be read as a reflection of the downbeat economy, but Crawford says it is really a test for next summer, when the Festival hopes to tour its production -- probably Twelfth Night -- to Hawaii.

To build up its treasury for 2012, the company contemplated instituting an admission charge instead of its tradition of free performances. “Ultimately, we all came around to the idea of keeping it as free as possible for our audiences,” says Crawford.

“There are some people who come out almost every night with their family, because it’s free. But as they’ve told us, they simply can’t afford to come out all that often if there’s an admission fee. So we’ve kept it at free admission with a suggested donation of $5 or whatever you want to put into the wishing well.”

THE TEMPEST. Palm Beach Shakespeare Festival, Seabreeze Amphitheatre, A1A and Indiantown Road, Carlin Park, Jupiter. Thursday-Sunday, July 14-17 and 21-24. Admission free, with suggested donation of $5. Call: (561) 963-6755.

The 1984 film Footloose, starring Kevin Bacon and Lori Singer, tells the story of a Chicago teenager, Ren McCormack, who moves to a small town where dancing and rock music are banned.

Boosted by a catchy score, it was fairly successful on screen but has found eternal life in its 1998 adaptation for the musical theatre, becoming one of the most frequently performed of all school musicals.

This Friday and Saturday, the Maltz Jupiter Theatre Conservatory of Performing Arts' vacation camps for grades 6-12 will produce and perform Footloose, under the direction of New York actor Dennis O’Bannion.

“This is a great opportunity for local children and teens to have the chance to experience what it's like to work in professional theater and perform on that theater’s stage in a full musical, complete with lighting, sets and more,” O’Bannion said. “I'm particularly excited to share with the students all of the knowledge I’ve gained from living and working in New York City as a professional performer for the past nine years.”

O’Bannion, seen on Broadway in Irving Berlin’s White Christmas at the Marquis Theatre in 2009, appeared at the Maltz in March in the musical Crazy for You, after which he was invited by Andrew Kato, the artistic director at the Maltz, to return in June to direct this show.

O’Bannion grew up performing in musical theatre at the Children’s Musical Theatre in San Jose, Calif., and has performed in Footloose himself.

“This is a great show about youthful energy and standing up for what you believe in,” he said. “The kids are so much fun and have so much energy and potential. I hope to inspire them to pursue theater as I have.”

With a cast of 60 students and dozens of musical numbers to choreograph and direct, the job can be daunting.

Students rehearsed from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily for three weeks to learn their choreography, songs, lines and roles. It is an intense program, but one that the students are passionate about.

Lanardo (Leo) Davis, 18, a senior at Royal Palm Beach High School who will attend the New World School of the Arts in Miami this fall, auditioned for and won the role of the Rev. Shaw Moore, who was played by John Lithgow in the film.

Davis, who has studied voice and dance since fifth grade and was classically trained at the Dreyfoos School of the Arts in West Palm Beach, plans to pursue a career in the theater.

“My life changed when I joined the conservatory at the Maltz,” said Davis, whose favorite musicals include In the Heights, Cats and Beauty and the Beast. “I fell in love with musical theatre. I love the songs in Footloose – the title song, Footloose, as well as I Need a Hero and Almost Paradise.”

Not one to sit passively by, Davis watched a DVD of the original film and watched the musical version on YouTube, looking for a role that he wanted.

“I asked myself, what role will fit me?” he said, “and decided to try out for the role of the reverend. I was interested in playing a role with power and authority and the role of the reverend has both.”

Jessica Pereira, 17, a senior at Wellington Christian School who aspires to be like her idol, Kristen Chenoweth, plays the lead role, Ariel Moore, the reverend’s daughter. Pereira credits musical theater with bringing her out of her shell.

“I have studied dance with Brian Andrews at Ballet Plus in Lake Worth since I was four years old,” Pereira said. “I used to be very shy before I discovered singing and dancing.”

Pereira comes from a line of dancers. Her maternal grandmother was a dancer and her mother, Kathleen, danced with Ballet Florida in the mid-1980s.

Pereira’s younger sister, Kristina, 13, is in the chorus.

“This is the best show I’ve ever been in,” gushed Jessica Pereira, even though she’s been in two shows at the Maltz: Cats, and the Best of Broadway Showcase last December. “Dennis is a great choreographer and I’m so thankful to be in the show and so thankful for all my teachers – they are all amazing.”

The biggest challenge for Pereira, who is in every scene, is learning all her lines.

“The music comes easily,” she says, “but it’s not easy to memorize all the dialogue. Sometimes my mother helps me in the car on the way to rehearsal and other times I lock myself in my room and try to memorize all the lines. It can be just as hard as schoolwork, but it’s much more fun.”

Caiti Marlowe turns 15 on the last day of the show and has dual roles as Vi (played by Dianne Wiest in the movie), the reverend’s wife, and as a mother of a teenager. At the age of 9, Marlowe announced to her mother, “I want to be an actress.”

Her mother, Kit, who was a former catalog model for the long-gone department store, Jordan Marsh, and played an extra in the film Caddyshack, says her daughter “has the talent that I never had.

“She made tremendous strides in last summer’s production of High School Musical at the Maltz thanks to the very devoted staff. They love the kids and treat them as professionals and bring out the best in the students,” she said. Spending so many hours together, they truly become a family. The faculty is very devoted and nurturing, and teach the kids to be themselves.”

While Marlowe admits to not having seen any of the rehearsals, she is looking forward to the opening night Friday.

“We booked a room at the Jupiter Beach Resort,” Marlowe said. “We will stay overnight and celebrate Caiti’s 15^th birthday and her role in Footloose.”

Footloose will be performed at 7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday. Tickets are $20 for adults; $15 for children. Call 561-575-2223 or visit www.jupitertheatre.org.

There was every reason to be worried about this year’s Summer Shorts, the 16th annual collection of stage vignettes that has become a much-anticipated seasonal fixture in South Florida.

The number of 5-to-20-minute scenes had been reduced to only seven, in a single program instead of the usual two. The company of performers had shriveled to a mere five -- about half as many as in the past -- and much of the advance publicity focused on a celebrity guest, Jai Rodriguez, featured on TV’s Queer Eye for the Straight Guy and in a couple of Broadway shows.

If there was one thing that we could count on about Summer Shorts was that they would be delivered by a well-balanced ensemble of area performers. Had City Theatre both shrunk the size and scope of its show this year and felt the need to bring in a ringer?

Not to worry. This year’s edition of short-attention-span theater is one of the most successful in the company’s history, as strong a mix of outrageous comedy bumped up against poignant drama as City Theatre has ever mustered.

Past productions, with as many as 18 sketches, divided into two parts and separated by a dinner break, had more of a festival atmosphere, but they also had a disheartening number of what-could-they-have-been-thinking dud scenes.

Now playing at Miami’s Arsht Center, in the comfortably compact Carnival Studio black box theater, configured proscenium style, the evening is pared down to 90 minutes, but each of the short plays is a winner. And the penultimate sketch, Jon Kern’s Hate the Loser Inside, is simply one of the funniest scenes I have ever seen in my years of theater-going.

Nor should there have been any concern about the casting of Rodriguez, who fit into the company seamlessly and demonstrated his acting chops in both comedy and drama. The opening skit, Bienvenidos a Miami by Mark Swaner, directly addressed the issue of featuring a star interloper and Rodriguez quickly showed that he has a sense of humor about himself.

Mock-miffed by Rodriguez’s presence was Stephen Trovillion, a/k/a “Mr. Summer Shorts,” for his countless appearances in which he stole the performance honors from the rest of the group. Late in the production he does so again as sports coach Donny Broadhaus in Hate the Loser Inside, a comic turn so deft and delicious it brings to mind nothing less than Lucille Ball and her classic Vitameatavegamin routine.

Trovillion plays a wound-too-tight celeb coach, trying to videotape a commercial on a kitchen set, but he keeps flubbing his lines. That’s it. Nothing more. But Trovillion is such a master of comic timing and the slow burn that the results are convulsively funny. In an evening of strong writing and performances, he remains “Mr. Summer Shorts.”

He is matched with Rodriguez in another of the best scenes, a simple but affecting encounter between two men in a therapist’s waiting room (Quiet, Please! by Garth Wingfield.). Trovillion also shows his silly side as a Caligula-like Emperor from outer space in Mickey Herman Saves The $#&@ World, a sci-fi spoof by Marco Ramirez that, while amusing, went on a tad too long.

The most prominent name among the featured playwrights is Israel Horovitz, whose tight dramatic scene, What Strong Fences Make, pits an Israeli border guard against an old acquaintance turned suicide bomber. Rodriguez and Gregg Weiner fulfill the roles well, though the writing lacks surprise.

Weiner is returning to Summer Shorts after a five-year absence with a particularly welcome presence in Aboard the Guy V. Molinari by Bara Swain, about two strangers on the Staten Island ferry, both intent on leaping to their death. Finnerty Steeves, who has a terrifically expressive face, plays the other down-on-her-luck loner.

Steeves pairs with Ceci Fernandez in Richard Hellesen’s Dos Corazones (Two Hearts), a Summer Shorts favorite that has appeared in two previous editions. It involves two new mothers in maternity ward beds, side-by-side yet separated by a language gulf, learning to communicate about the responsibilities of the newborns in their lives.

Summer Shorts likes to end with a broadly comic sketch involving the entire company and does so again this time with another encore playlet, Rolin Jones’s Chronicles Simpkins Will Cut Your Ass, about a trio of no-nonsense mean girls terrorizing a male peer and a helpless playground monitor teacher on the tetherball court. Nearly mute because of her dental retainer, Steeves still manages to gain laughs with her mumbles and takes, while Rodriguez has fun in drag as the title ring leader.

For consistency and sheer entertainment value, this 16^th Summer Shorts is a winner, even if downsizing for economic reasons was the cause. You will probably enjoy the whole evening, but if you saw only Trovillion in Hate the Loser Inside you would get your money’s worth from the experience.

SUMMER SHORTS. City Theatre at the Adrienne Arsht Center, 1300 Biscayne Blvd., Miami. Through Sunday, June 26. Tickets: $45. Call: (305) 949-6722. Summer Shorts also will play the Broward Center in Fort Lauderdale from June 30-July 3. For tickets and information, call (954) 462-0222 or visit www.browardcenter.org.

It was a great night for smiling proselytizers and equine puppets.

Of course, I’m referring to The Book of Mormon and War Horse, which cemented their hit status by taking a victory lap at last night’s 65^th annual Tony Awards telecast, grabbing nine and five statuettes respectively.

The ceremony itself was one of the best in many years, though it continued to give short shrift to plays in favor of musicals and more and more awards in the design categories were presented off-camera before the telecast. There remains a tension between the program being an awards show versus a variety show. I understand the tilt towards the latter, but that doesn’t mean I am happy about it.

Obviously, time constraints are not the issue, ratings are. The Tonys are a ratings disaster, so if CBS is willing to continue carrying it, I guess the network has the right to insist on a musical number from Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, even though it was a boring, tone-deaf ballad and we saw no flying effects, perhaps for safety’s sake. (Insert your favorite Spider-Man joke here.)

More questionable -- even though a number by Stephen Sondheim is always welcome in my book -- was the time devoted to a national broadcast plug for the recent concert version of Company, which was recorded for theatrical release beginning this Wednesday evening.

It is no coincidence that playing the role of bachelor Bobby was Neil Patrick Harris, the Tonys’ emcee for the second year in a row. If the live commercial was part of the quid pro quo of landing him as the show’s winsome host, so be it.

A year ago, his considerable skills as a song-and-dance man were kept under wraps until the waning moments of the program. This year, he led with them, vocalizing on the tongue-in-cheek opening production number about Broadway -- It’s Not Just for Gays Anymore. Later came a clever duet with former Tonys (and Oscars) host Hugh Jackman, a faux-jealousy medley about their comparative abilities, in the anything-you-can-do, I-can-do-better vein.

Then there was Side by Side by Side from Company, and best of all was a rap recap of the show -- written by Tony winner Lin-Manuel Miranda (In the Heights) that was obviously updated during the show with some droll lyrics, recited deftly by the unflappable Harris.

As to the awards themselves, I guess you could say there were no surprises -- well, maybe John Larroquette (How To Succeed in Business . . .) for featured actor in a musical. If you put your money on The Book of Mormon and War Horse at every opportunity, you did fine. In any event, ahem, I correctly predicted 24 of 26 categories, thus winning in a Tonys pool with friends. I sincerely hope you took my prognostications and found some sucker to bet with.

Here are other stray thoughts on the Tonys:

* I am particularly delighted that the great Mark Rylance won, because of his Dadaesque acceptance speech about walking through walls. I have no idea what possessed him to address the subject, but it was a rare moment of loopy spontaneity.

* I loved Nikki M. James’s speech, particularly the bumblebee references. She is terrific in The Book of Mormon and all recipients should be as excited as she was about winning an award.

* The Book of Mormon is much better than it came off in its musical number, I Believe. The selection was probably the only one that could be performed without earning CBS substantial fines from the FCC, but still a discreetly edited medley would have been better.

* A final high point of irreverence in the telecast was Chris Rock’s introductory remarks to announcement of the Best Musical. Yes, I know he bombed hosting the Oscars, but the guy I saw last night deserves a shot at emceeing the Tonys.

* Also liked the segment with Harris telling as many Spider-Man jokes as he could in 30 seconds. (Ex: “I sent Bono a congratulatory cable, but it snapped.”)

* The “My Broadway Moment” idea was a good one, but there were not enough on them to leave the desired impression. I’m guessing there were others that had to be cut once the first awards recipient, Ellen Barkin, droned on.

* I did pick Barkin to win the featured actress award, but thought she was dreadful in The Normal Heart. Her big, angry monologue was yelled from the start, all at the same level. Fewer movie stars got nominations this year and even fewer won, but celebrity is the only explanation for the casting of Barkin and for her Tony win.

Recession? What recession? If the economy was in the doldrums this year, Broadway sure didn’t know about it.

For the commercial theater season in New York that ended May 29, Broadway shows drew $1.08 billion in ticket sales, up 5.9 percent from last season to post record-breaking grosses.

Of course ticket prices also set record highs, reaching a top of $140 for -- you guessed it -- Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, the non-opener of the season that sucked up much of the business as well as the media coverage, while garnering some of the most brutal reviews ever bestowed on a musical, especially one that has not even opened yet. That happens this Tuesday evening -- unless the show’s producers postpone the premiere yet again -- and if it remains impervious to critical bashing and settles in for a long, lucrative run, expect another increase in ticket prices. Why the show is even bothering to declare an official opening is anyone’s guess.

Since it did not open this season, it was not eligible for Tony Award nominations, though Spider-Man is likely to be the butt of many jokes on the telecast this Sunday evening (8-10 p.m., on CBS). Which will surely generate more ticket sales and keep the show running far longer than it deserves to.

To be fair, I have not yet seen Spider-Man. I did go to Broadway to sample the season, but was able to dodge the Spider-Man bullet because it was on a three-week hiatus undergoing major surgery and rehearsals. Timing truly is everything.

Spider-Man aside, it was a pretty good season on Broadway, which is to say a new unexpected smash hit musical arrived on the scene (The Book of Mormon) and several worthy new plays (Good People, Jerusalem, War Horse and the one whose title you will surely not hear pronounced on the Tonyscast, The Motherf**ker with the Hat).

Expect The Book of Mormon to score a major win at the Tonys, picking up perhaps as many as 10 awards (out of its 14 nominations). Not bad for a couple of Broadway neophytes, Trey Parker and Matt Stone, who were not unfamiliar with the mechanics of musicals, thanks to their long-running snarky hit TV show, South Park, and its 1999 feature film spinoff.

Parker and Stone kept their show carefully under wraps before performances began in February, resulting in a sleeper success with critics and audiences alike. Also gaining unexpectedly enthusiastic reviews was Stephen Adly Guirgis’s Motherf**ker with the Hat, about “love, fidelity and misplaced haberdashery,” which could not even advertise itself in mainstream newspapers until an acceptable way of expurgating its title was arrived at.

If it all but sneaked onto Broadway, the two Tony-nominated British imports -- Jerusalem and War Horse -- arrived with considerable hype and towering expectations, which both managed to live up to. While The Book of Mormon is a prohibitive favorite to win for Best Musical, the Best Play race looks to be a photo finish.

War Horse is probably not the best play on paper, but it is surely the best production of the season, and that may be enough to earn it the Tony. Based on a children’s book turned into an imaginative puppet epic, its script weaknesses are more than trumped by its theatricality, which leaves grown theatergoers brushing away tears and grown reviewers hunting for superlatives.

Jerusalem has nothing at all to do with the Middle East, but is rather about a provincial British drug-dealing, convention-flaunting scalawag holed up in a trailer in the Wiltshire woods. The three-hour play has its merits, though it could use further editing. But it is the central performance by the remarkable Mark Rylance that puts this one in the must-see category.

Although business was bullish on Broadway this season, only five new productions managed to turn a profit so far, according to Variety’s figures, and they are not the shows you would expect to reach black ink. They are: Driving Miss Daisy, The Merchant of Venice, The Pee-Wee Herman Show, Rain and That Championship Season. Of them, only Rain, a faux-Beatles concert show, is still running.

The season had its extravagant flops (Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, Wonderland), its admired off-Broadway shows that unwisely transferred to Broadway where they fizzled out (The Scottsboro Boys, Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson) and its what-could-they-have-been-thinking duds (Elling, High, A Free Man of Color), but on balance it was not a bad year on Broadway, with enough standouts to justify a theater trip to New York.

Here is my take on some of the major shows of the season:

* The Book of Mormon (Eugene O’Neill Thr., (212) 239-6200) -- Fans of South Park should not be surprised that Trey Parker and Matt Stone are steeped in musical theater lore, and now they have arrived on Broadway with a profane, but endearing example of the genre. Collaborating with Avenue Q composer Robert Lopez and Drowsy Chaperone director-choreographer Casey Nicholaw, they have come up with an affectionate skewering of the Church of Latter-Day Saints that also satirizes major musicals.

Andrew Rannells and Josh Gad are the Laurel and Hardy of Mormon missionaries, send to proselytize in AIDS-ravaged Uganda, which has little in common with The Lion King, as the upbeat number Hasa Diga Eebowai (a send-up of Hakuna Matata) makes clear. The result is wicked fun that even open-minded Mormons can embrace.

* War Horse (Vivian Beaumont Thr., (212) 239-6200) -- Sure, Avenue Q and The Lion King have done much to legitimize stage puppetry, but their strides are nothing compared to the emotional effect of full-size horses come to life in this highly theatrical rendering of Michael Morpurgo’s 1982 children’s novel. Add stunning animated projections and this production beats the movies at their own game, a feat likely to be achieved again this Christmas when Steven Spielberg brings out his necessarily literal-minded, film version of War Horse.

The story is both simple and universal, a depiction of the horrors of war as seen through a teenage boy and his hand-me-down horse, who both go off to fight in World War I, amid mustard gas, barbed wire coils and other perils. Co-directors Marianne Elliott and Tom Morris mobilize a cast of three dozen on the vast Lincoln Center stage, but it is the magic of the puppetry that makes this experience so memorable.

* Jerusalem (Music Box Thr., (212) 239-6200, through Aug. 21) -- One time in your life you must see Mark Rylance onstage. Earlier this season he stunned audiences with a 30-minute monologue in rhymed couplets in La Bete, and three years ago he walked off with a Tony for his part in an inconsequential comedy, Boeing-Boeing. Now he is center stage in Jez Butterworth’s marathon fable about a rascally, drug-dealing womanizer holed up in a trailer in rural England, and nothing about these three performances have the least bit in common. If you appreciate chameleon-like acting, Rylance manages it as well as anyone in the theater today, but you probably need to see him twice to fully appreciate his skill.

Here he plays Johnny “Rooster” Byron, a pot-bellied, tattooed Pied Piper who leads a band of younger blokes, drawing them to his non-conformist ways. Chances are the play’s political resonances speak more to the Brits, but even over here, with a script that could use some paring down, it is a worthy character study as well as a great opportunity for Rylance to show his stuff.

* The Normal Heart (Golden Thr., (800) 432-7250, through July 10) -- Twenty-six years ago, gay activist-author-professional loudmouth Larry Kramer wrote an angry screed against governmental and institutional indifference towards a mysterious new medical condition afflicting the homosexual community. What the play lacked in neatness, it more than made up for in heat, and now -- as AIDS remains uncured, without the urgency of a crisis -- this semi-autobiographical history of the early 1980s plague years in New York has been revived with its power very much intact.

Joe Mantello (Angels in America) makes a brilliant return to Broadway as hothead Ned Weeks -- the Kramer character -- in tandem with John Benjamin Hickey as the paranoid New York Times reporter who becomes his lover. Only theater neophyte Ellen Barkin errs as a wheelchair-bound doctor, showing her fervency by shouting her big impassioned monologue. Still, the collective effect is seismic, and perhaps this limited run will spawn other productions around the country.

* Born Yesterday (Cort Thr., (800) 432-7250, through July 31) -- There is more than one way to make a political point on stage and, in 1946, Garson Kanin chose comedy to warn of Washington bullies who play fast and loose with the Constitution. If you think that is a message that needs delivering again today, so did director Doug Hughes (Doubt) who mounts a revival of the tale of a chorus cutie whose climb up the learning curve thwarts a greedy scheme by her junkyard magnate boy friend.

Looming over any revival, though, is the classic comic performance of Judy Holliday, the original Billie Dawn, and Oscar winner for the role four years later. Undaunted is young, nasal-voiced kewpie Nina Arianda, making the kind of Broadway debut that will be talked about with admiration for a long time to come. Jim Belushi and Robert Sean Leonard provide crucial support as the New Joisey wheeler-dealer and the reporter he hires to smarten up Billie. But it is Arianda who makes this production a must-see.

* Catch Me If You Can (Simon Thr., (800) 755-4000) -- When a musical goes wrong, the conclusion is usually that the source material was a bad choice to be told in song and dance. That is not the case with this 2002 charming con man flick from the ubiquitous Spielberg, whose imposter-pilot-doctor main character seems tailor-made for musical comedy. The problem is that the veteran creative team -- songwriters Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman, director Jack O’Brien and choreographer Jerry Mitchell -- the folks who struck gold with Hairspray, stub their collective toes with the transfer.

Instead of a straight-forward rendering, the story is told with a conceptual overlay of a live TV variety show of the period. That gives hard-working Norbert Leo Butz as pursuing FBI agent Carl Hanratty (a/k/a the Tom Hanks part) the opportunity for a showstopping dance number (Don’t Break the Rules), but it flattens the score into a dull, easy-listening pastiche. Aaron Tveit (Next to Normal) is devilishly charming as Frank Abagnale, Jr., but he lacks Butz’s star power and the show loses its focus as a result.

Hap’s Fearless Tony Predictions

Quick, call up your bookie, start up an office pool, place a bet at the Hard Rock Casino. Here, thanks to my amazing analytical skills and powers of prognostication, are the winners of this year’s Tony Awards. No, really.

* Best Play: War Horse

* Best Musical: The Book of Mormon

* Best Book, Musical: The Book of Mormon

* Best Score: The Book of Mormon

* Best Revival, Play: The Normal Heart

* Best Revival, Musical: Anything Goes

* Best Actor, Play: Mark Rylance, Jerusalem

* Best Actress, Play: Frances McDormand, Good People

* Best Actor, Musical: Norbert Leo Butz, Catch Me If You Can

* Best Actress, Musical: Sutton Foster, Anything Goes

* Best Featured Actor, Play: John Benjamin Hickey, The Normal Heart

* Best Featured Actress, Play: Ellen Barkin, The Normal Heart

* Best Featured Actor, Musical: Rory O’Malley, The Book of Mormon

* Best Featured Actress, Musical: Nikki M. James, The Book of Mormon

* Best Scenic Design, Play: Rae Smith, War Horse

* Best Scenic Design, Musical: Scott Pask, The Book of Mormon

* Best Costume Design, Play: Jess Goldstein, The Merchant of Venice

* Best Costume Design, Musical: Tim Chappel and Lizzy Gardiner, Priscilla Queen of the Desert

* Best Lighting Design, Play: Paule Constable, War Horse

* Best Lighting Design, Musical: Brian MacDevitt, The Book of Mormon

* Best Sound Design, Play: Christopher Shutt, War Horse

* Best Sound Design, Musical: Brian Ronan, The Book of Mormon

* Best Direction, Play: Marianne Elliott and Tom Morris, War Horse

* Best Direction, Musical: Casey Nicholaw and Trey Parker, The Book of Mormon

* Best Choreography: Kathleen Marshall, Anything Goes

* Best Orchestrations: Larry Hochman and Stephen Oremus, The Book of Mormon