(nyp) When a Broadway musical like "Fela!" — dynamic, inventive, ambitious — loses to a Broadway musical like "Memphis" — infantile, predictable, tedious — you know the Tony Awards no longer have anything re motely to do with "excellence in the theater." Last night, the ground-breaking musical about Fela Kuti, the Nigerian song writer and polit ical activist who created Afro-Beat and defied oil com panies and to talitarian govern ments, lost the Tony to a feel-good show about an oppressively cute white disc jockey who likes black people and promotes their music. If the year were 1955, I'd say bravo to "Memphis." But, 60 years past the civil-rights movement, Broadway and its 700 mummified Tony voters still think a musical about integrating the high-school dance is cutting edge. What's really going on here is the corruption of the Tony Award, which once upon a time really did stand for American theater at its best. "Fela!" would have won the Tony had critics and theater reporters, who have supported the show since it opened on Off-Broadway two years ago, been allowed to vote for it. But last year, the critics and the press were stripped of their voting privileges by cynical producers who want to make pots of money sending out harmless musicals to hick audiences around the country.

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