COMMENTARY : Broadway’s Night to Howl : Our critic makes her fearless Tony Award predictions. It’s a very slim year for new : musicals, but the plays are rich in variety and surprise, with performances to match.

Next Sunday is the annual Tony Awards telecast, traditionally a time for critics to dish the New York theater season that was. So, here we go.

This was the year in which the Tony nominating committee simply handed out two awards to “Sunset Boulevard”--the only new musical of the season with a book (Don Black and Christopher Hampton) and an original score (Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber). This was also the year when it suddenly and mysteriously became permissible for three categories (all of them for musicals) to include only two nominees.

A slim year for original musicals? The slimmest. Has Broadway shrunk so much as to render the Tony Awards an embarrassment? The evidence on musicals is in, but let us not rush to judgment. As it turns out, this has been a season rich in variety and surprise, if you turn your attention to plays and performances in plays.

For those planning to follow the contest next Sunday night, here’s my running commentary and betting aid (no guarantees):

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Play: There is only one weak entry in this category, and that is “Having Our Say,” the true story of the centenarian Delany sisters, adapted and directed by Emily Mann. The sisters tell of their many experiences as Negro women (as they ask to be called) through an American century. The play is essentially a civics lesson. It has no chance.

“Indiscretions” is Jean Cocteau’s blistering, dark farce about a family suffocating itself with a kind of closeness. Britain’s Royal National Theatre production is superb, but “Indiscretions” won’t win for best play. For one thing, its author is a dead Frenchman; for another, the play’s depiction of mother-son incest may be too racy for the bulk of the 700 or so Tony voters, many of them conservative.

The true contest is between two very different and extremely satisfying productions by important living playwrights working at the top of their form. Tom Stoppard’s “Arcadia” is a complex detective story of the mind, in which two academics attempt to crack the mystery of what went on in a lovely English country estate with an extraordinary literary pedigree. The play is exhilarating and haunting, and Stoppard hasn’t won since “The Real Thing” in 1984. But he’ll probably have to wait a bit longer to win again.

Set in another idyllic country house where a group of gay men gather in friendship and bitchiness, Terrence McNally’s “Love! Valour! Compassion!” is a beautiful and elegiac play, but it is marred by an overdose of cloying poetry. That shouldn’t matter on Sunday night. In New York, at this moment, Terrence McNally is speaking to more people than Tom Stoppard. He is most likely to win.

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Actress in a play: We can eliminate Mary Alice, who is fine as the spunkier Delany sister but who has no chance because of the quality of the play. Helen Mirren is a fascinating actress but not in the current dull production of Ivan Turgenev’s “A Month in the Country.” Kathleen Turner should have been nominated for her deranged mother routine in “Indiscretions” but wasn’t.

This narrows down to the fiercest contest of the night. Eileen Atkins, the astringent British actress best known here for playing Virginia Woolf in “A Room of One’s Own” and in “Vita and Virginia,” is archness and style personified as Leo in “Indiscretions.” She is absolutely at the top of her game.

Going toe to toe with her is American Cherry Jones in “The Heiress,” by Ruth and Augustus Goetz, adapted from the Henry James novel “Washington Square.” Usually known for her vivacity, Jones here plays a pathologically shy woman who finally finds her voice after total emotional devastation. This actress is just finding her depth in “The Heiress,” and her discovery is a breathtaking thing to behold. I think she will win. The heiress is a star-making role (Olivia de Havilland won an Oscar for the film), and after next Sunday night, the Tony will confirm that Cherry Jones is now a star.

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Actor in a play: Nathan Lane failed to get a nomination for his role as a sick man whose devotion to musical comedy borders on the hysterical in “Love! Valour! Compassion!” That omission--which is a sham of a travesty of a mockery--occurred because the show’s producers put Lane up for best actor; the nominating committee subsequently explained that it saw the play as an ensemble piece and saw Lane’s role as that of a featured actor, which knocked him out of the competition altogether. Count on some interesting commentary on this subject from the notoriously acerbic Lane, who will be one of the evening’s hosts.

As for the actual nominees, I didn’t see Brian Bedford as Sganarelle in “The Moliere Comedies,” which puts me at a disadvantage in handicapping this and a few other categories. I disliked Ralph Fiennes’ whiny Hamlet. Roger Rees was good but not great as the father in “Indiscretions.” I did not see Joe Sears play his multitude of small-town characters in “A Tuna Christmas,” but I do know that though nominated, he doesn’t need to bother to attend the ceremony. My vote goes blind to Bedford, an established man of the theater.

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Featured actress in a play: As the not-so-innocent ingenue from “Indiscretions,” Cynthia Nixon is winning, but she won’t win. As in the previous category, the award will go to a vet, Frances Sternhagen, who plays the meddlesome aunt in “The Heiress.”

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Featured actor in a play: I think “Indiscretions’ ” Jude Law, the young British actor who plays the incestuous son with the body and energy of a mime, will probably leave the three contenders from “Love! Valour! Compassion!” effectively un-Tonyed.

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Leading actress in a musical: “Show Boat’s” ingenue, Rebecca Luker. Just kidding! Her voice is lovely, but she doesn’t have a prayer against the icy grandiosity of Norma Desmond: Glenn Close will win for “Sunset Boulevard.” (Megan Mullally should have been nominated for her role as Rosemary in “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying.”)

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Leading actor in a musical: There is something to be said for the work of “Sunset’s” slick gigolo, Alan Campbell, and for “Show Boat’s” exuberant Cap’n Andy, John McMartin. But Matthew Broderick will imitate his adorably tentative character J. Pierrepont Finch in “How to Succeed” and take the apple from his rivals.

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Featured actress in a musical: Wonderful torch singer Lonette McKee, who plays Julie in “Show Boat,” would easily have won this had she been nominated (she had already been nominated for Julie once before, which made her ineligible). Oh, well. Will one of the three female singers from the Leiber and Stoller revue “Smokey Joe’s Cafe” win? It’s hard to care, even though the show is a hometown effort, having played at the Doolittle Theatre before moving to Broadway. It’s not about anything. Gretha Boston, Queenie from “Show Boat,” will take it.

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Featured actor in a musical: As Joe, singer of “Ol’ Man River” in “Show Boat,” Michel Bell is nominated for his voice; he can’t act. Joel Blum, the comic relief in “Show Boat,” just didn’t pull in strong enough reviews. Victor Trent Cook, from “Smokey Joe’s Cafe,” pushes too hard. George Hearn, a veteran of Broadway, will win for his role as the frightening Teutonic manservant in “Sunset Boulevard.”

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Director of a play: For “Having Our Say,” Emily Mann has no chance. That leaves a strong three-way race: Joe Mantello’s work is impressive in “Love! Valour!” but I think he’s still in the dues-paying stage of his career. Sean Mathias is brilliant, but he’s young and he’s British and, again, “Indiscretions” is probably not the Tony voters’ cup of tea. For that reason I think the award will go to “The Heiress’ ” Gerald Gutierrez, who has shown great range in his work of late (“Abe Lincoln in Illinois,” “The Most Happy Fella”). Besides, people may admire “Indiscretions,” but they love “The Heiress.”

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Director of a musical: It will be the great old man of the musical, Hal Prince, for the revival of the great old Jerome Kern-Oscar Hammerstein musical “Show Boat.” Prince’s work has more heart than “Sunset Boulevard” (Trevor Nunn), more soul than “How to Succeed” (Des McAnuff) and more everything than “Smokey Joe’s Cafe” (Jerry Zaks). With 19 Tonys already at home, Prince has more of those statuettes than any other person living or dead. He can make room on his mantel for one more.

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Original score: I predict--and I’m going out on a limb here--Andrew Lloyd Webber.

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Revival of a musical: “How to Succeed” is stylish and fun, but I don’t think it can compete with the depth of “Ol’ Man River.” “Show Boat” will win.

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Revival of a play: Wish I had seen those darn “Moliere Comedies.” It doesn’t matter, though; “The Heiress” will win.

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Musical: “Sunset Boulevard,” of course.

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Choreography: Wayne Cilento provided some spiffy moves for the cast of “How to Succeed,” but Susan Stroman will win for “Show Boat.” It not only has the most ambitious dancing, it has the most dancing.

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Lighting design: Andrew Bridge may win for “Sunset Boulevard” because the big musicals usually do. But I vote for dark horse Beverly Emmons. In “The Heiress,” she provided the most precise and most mood-setting lighting of the season. The play’s final image, in which the heiress goes slowly up a staircase, silhouetted against a wall, is a knockout.

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Costume design: There’s a lot of good work in this category. Stephen Brimson Lewis provides witty dresses for the women in “Indiscretions.” Anthony Powell’s gowns for Norma Desmond in “Sunset Boulevard” are grandly macabre. But Florence Klotz will win for the sheer bulk (about 500 costumes) of her designs for “Show Boat,” a compendium of American dress from 1887 to 1927.

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Scenic design: This is another killer competition. John Lee Beatty’s parlor for “The Heiress” is so redolent of old wealth, you can almost hear the quiet of a 100-year-old Washington Square Park outside the front window. Mark Thompson’s great country estate for “Arcadia” is crucial in establishing the magical air of a house in which amazing thoughts were thought. In “Indiscretions,” Stephen Brimson Lewis provides a set full of surprises, even if its fantastic collapse owes quite a lot to Ian MacNeil’s work in “An Inspector Calls.”

Try as they might to compete, though, English straight plays like “Indiscretions” cannot compare with lavish musicals. John Napier’s majestic set for “Sunset Boulevard” gets applause and deserves it. Napier will win.

* The Tony Awards air next Sunday at 9 p.m. on CBS (Channels 2 and 8).