A BRITISH NIGHT ON BROADWAY AT THE TONYS : Britannia Rules, but the Accent Is on the Human Factor in a Jolly Good Show

“Can you imagine a British actor holding this on a Broadway stage?” marveled Robert Lindsay, receiving his Tony Award for “Me and My Girl” Sunday night.

The home viewer had no problem imagining it. Not only did every other Tony recipient this year seem to have a British accent, so did every other presenter, starting with emcee Angela Lansbury.

Depressing? Realistic, rather. The Brits did sweep the field this year, so why not recognize it? And they all said their thank-yous very nicely, all but designer John Napier. He wondered out loud why his “Starlight Express” set hadn’t been nominated for a Tony, as well as his “Les Miserables” set.

This was something new: a sore winner. Yet Napier’s remark struck a chord, at least with me. Not only do we expect applause for what we do in this life, it’s got to be for the right reasons .

The human factor always crops up at the Tonys. For instance, Jackie Mason admitted that he had no one to thank for his show, “The World According to Me,” but himself--unlike those winners who credited God, their mothers, their 12-year-daughters and the stage doorman for contributing to their success.

And, wouldn’t you know, the San Francisco Mime Troupe got in a dig about U.S. policy in Central America. Imagine, a political theater that takes politics seriously.

It’s those little departures from the norm that make awards shows fun to watch--the reminder that, unlike most of TV, the script hasn’t all been written down and cleared by the network two weeks ahead of time.

All in all, this was the most entertaining and substantial Tony broadcast in memory. In his first year doing the show, producer Don Mischer made sure that it was good television, just as his predecessor Alexander Cohen had done.

The visuals were slick. The pace was brisk. The guest stars were starry--Mary Tyler Moore, William Hurt, Kathleen Turner, Bea Arthur--the latter terrific with Lansbury in a reprise of their bitchy “Bosom Buddies” duet from “Mame.”

The glitz was all in place, the cast--including George Abbott, 99--was on the mark. As usual, the Tonys made the Oscars look like a sluggish trade show.

More important, it put theater first--something that hadn’t always been true under Cohen.

For the first time in years, for example, we didn’t just get scenes from the four nominated musicals (“Les Miserables” clearly the class of the field this year). We also got them from the four nominated plays.

Cohen had felt that you couldn’t do that on TV, both for logistical reasons and because viewer attention would drop, since nobody in Peoria would know what the plays were about.

Mischer solved the problem by picking two-character scenes (moments, really) and by having one of the guest stars give us a quick background paragraph. It worked beautifully. We saw why James Earl Jones deserved his Tony for “Fences” and why Linda Lavin deserved hers for “Broadway Bound”--his power, her wryness.

Mischer also gave equal time to the resident-theater Tony Award, rather than granting it a 30-second handshake, as Cohen had done. One bridled a bit at the suggestion that resident theater and Off Broadway basically existed as feeder lots for Broadway--but it was a start.

Trevor Nunn missed a good bet here. Accepting his Tony for co-directing “Les Miserables,” he spoke admiringly of his partner, John Caird, and was reminded of the importance of partnership in the theater generally.

“Les Miz,” for example, he pointed out, came out of a partnership between a state-supported theater, the Royal Shakespeare Company, and the West End. One thought Nunn was going to stress the need for similar partnerships between American nonprofit theater and Broadway.

Instead, he took a mild shot at those spoilsports--the critics. Actually the critics have done pretty well for Mr. Nunn and the RSC and, for that matter, Broadway. Who else but a bosom buddy can tell you how rotten you are?