NEW YORK -- Musicals are the big-ticket lifeblood of Broadway, right? But in the 2007-08 theatrical season just ended, among shows nominated for at least one Tony Award, plays outnumber musicals 15 to 11.

Of course, most of the plays are revivals, nine to six. Among all plays, the rest of the world (mainly Britain) beats the U.S., also nine to six. And although the U.S. does lead among new plays, five to three, all three of the foreigners (two English, one Irish) are nominated for best play. Fortunately, if all this nationalistic score-keeping interests you, the sole American nominee, Tracy Lett's "August: Osage County," is going to be the winner when the Tony Awards are announced on June 15.

On the musicals side of the ledger, where the home team has returned to dominance after the Andrew Lloyd Webber era, all 11 shows nominated in any way are American, and a majority of them are new. Even so the musicals race attracting the most attention is for best revival, pitting "South Pacific" vs. "Gypsy," both the classic champs of their generations, Rodgers and Hammerstein vs. Styne, Laurents and Sondheim -- leaving "Sunday in the Park" (another Sondheim) and "Grease" as the nominated also-rans. If it were up to me, I'd give that Tony to "South Pacific."

Which brings us finally to what is usually the category attracting the most hoopla, best new musical. Here, chaos and uncertainty reign. The two big-ticket sure things, Mel Brooks' "Young Frankenstein" and Disney's "The Little Mermaid" (note the franchise names) aren't even nominated; nor is "The Catered Affair," which is really more a modest play than a musical.

So the four nominees are "In the Heights," "Passing Strange," "Xanadu" and "Cry-Baby" -- not one of them even remotely a household name, which any blockbuster musical strives to be.

Well, none of these is a blockbuster, either; it's just not their style. But one of the four is going to win, and I've just listed them in what I see as the order of their chances.

That is, "In the Heights" should win, and "Xanadu" and "Cry-Baby" won't, so "Passing Strange" (the only one I haven't seen) must have at least some chance at staging an upset.

Here are brief reviews of three of the new musicals.

"In the Heights"

This should be the winner, using the simplest test: it got my blood racing with its ebullience and energy.

The familiar story by Quiara Alegria Hudes is a double star-crossed lovers plot, a variant on "A Midsummer Night's Dream." A straight-A princess crosses tribal lines to find love; an earnest, hard-working geek gets the beauty of his dreams; sweet Abuela Claudia sacrifices herself; and a winning $96,000 lottery ticket supplies miraculous intervention. The plot gives us a rooting interest, yes, but only that.

No, the true heart of "In the Heights" is in the struggles of its title character, the multiethnic Latino (Dominican, Puerto Rican, Cuban) barrio named Washington Heights, tucked in under the George Washington Bridge. The barrio folk who keep bursting into song and dance are strikingly more beautiful than the average sidewalk crowd -- nothing wrong with that. And while the plot, characters and emotions are conventional, they fade away in the presence of the varied neighborhood, a variety best expressed in the pulsing, multirhythmic, rap-, salsa-, merengue- and soul-inflected score by Lin-Manuel Miranda.

Miranda also plays the likable, hard-working bodega owner, Usnavi (named for the U.S. Navy ship his Dominican father saw). He himself does much of the rap-lite -- I call it that because the lyrics are both wittier and more understandable than what you hear on the radio. Although the show uses pop musical styles, it always subjects them to the logic of story.

What also ignites the show with the urgency that is most exciting about musical theater is the movement and energy on stage, not just the choreography by Andy Blankenbuehler but the entire sense of a neighborhood bursting at the seams. For just one example, I loved the dancing by cell phone light at the end of Act 1.

"In the Heights" is not another break-through tribal musical like, in their respective days, "West Side Story," "Hair" or "Rent," but it gets its electricity from the same source. You might call it a Latino "Rent," as some have, except that the story is so familiar, complete with a misunderstanding older generation ("Midsummer," again).

No matter. It's the most exciting new musical I've seen on Broadway this year.

At Richard Rodgers Theatre, 226 W. 46th St.; 1-800-755-4000.

"A Catered Affair"

Oddly, what's most admirable in its special way about "Catered Affair" is that it isn't very exciting, nor does it try to be. This is more play than musical (call it a play with music), derived from one of those earnest golden age TV dramas by Paddy Chayevsky, turned into a movie by Gore Vidal and re-written for the stage by Harvey Fierstein.

It feels like Clifford Odets without the politics. David Gallo's set makes a virtue of a drab facelessness that has to be painstakingly peeled way to discover the throttled humanity within. In these urban canyons, gossips hang out their windows to speculate on the neighbors, driving repressed Aggie into even deeper silence.

You might expect music to brighten the scene, but it takes nearly forever until the first song, by which time the dynamic of family debate, recrimination and sacrifice has been set. The music and lyrics by John Bucchino are subsidiary -- the dialogue simply slips into talkative songs from time to time. To put it more affirmatively, say that the music serves only to undergird the drama already there.

Modest in every way, the story tells of a hardworking cabby and Aggie, his wife (Tom Wopat and Faith Prince), whose daughter, Janey (Leslie Kritzer), is in the family way and needs to marry. Living with them is Winston (Fierstein), the mother's confirmed bachelor brother (i.e., he's gay, but this is 1953).

Largely out of guilt, Mom decides to give Janey and Ralph (Matt Cavenaugh) a big, catered wedding, which they agree to for her sake, just as she thinks she's motivated by what's best for them. This causes a split with her dour, hard-working husband, who wants to use a recent windfall to buy a larger share of his taxi license.

The parallels are many between the older couple, a marriage of convenience which has grown little expressive warmth, and the younger, which already looks disappointingly matter-of-fact. But for all their delicacy and heartfelt authenticity, these parallel dramas remain as small as small-screen TV.

Prince is gloriously, uncompromisingly understated as Mom, wringing sympathy out of a flinty role, and Wopat is a warm, wry, bewildered presence. The young people have a practical surface but betray something plaintive within. Unfortunately, Fierstein's role seems oddly, even distractingly peripheral.

Still, "Catered Affir" is a sweet/tart small musical play. I'm not sure what it's doing on Broadway, but with a cast of just 10 and running time of just 95 minutes, it should have a strong regional life ahead.

At Walter Kerr Theatre, 219 W. 48th St.; 1-800-432-7250.

"Cry-Baby"

Based on the John Waters movie, with its plot of white bread straights vs. sexed-up rebels right out of "Grease," "Cry-Baby" is set in a 1950s Baltimore a la "Hairspray," created by the earlier hit's writers, Mark O'Donnell and Thomas Meehan. It's a bright and tuneful cartoon.

But unlike "Hairspray," it never reveals much heart. There's no "Rebel Without a Cause" beneath the caricature, just cardboard. Not that there isn't some fun, it just wears thin when you never really care about the central relationship of the good girl (aching to be bad), played by Elizabeth Stanley, and the bad boy (but really good), played by James Snyder.

The center of interest turns out to be Allison's protective grandmother, played by Harriet Harris with Waters weirdness and a satiric surrealism that makes normalcy look weird in contrast. The plot is full of the 50s' struggle with non-conformity, and, perhaps as a release of bottled up energy, the dialogue is full of exhilarating, groan-worthy puns and double-entendres.

The center of the show's energy is in the peppy if repetitive pop rock score by David Javerbaum and Adam Schlesinger and the athletic and often wittily parodic choreography by former Pittsburgher Rob Ashford, who even provides a dancing curtain call.

There's plenty to like in the show, it just never takes off. A little more bad boy and a little less pastel might have helped.

At Marquis Theatre, 1535 Broadway; 1-800-755-4000.