The Tonys are giving out awards for Broadway shows we’ve already seen

B’way revives & thrives

Be still my heart — it’s coming Tony time. I haven’t been this excited since someone served me farina.

I mean: Up for another yet one more, still again another “Death of a Salesman”? Hasn’t this guy permanently passed away yet? He’s got more statuettes than Arlington. And cats? More “Cats”? Now the “Jellicle Ball” cats. Soon the grandsons of the those Jellicle pussies. Audiences they need? AARP they need.

Comes the real thrill. Up for three awards since we barked at its original movie in 1975, “Dog Day Afternoon.” A true mazel tov.

Up for five awards — five, that’s 5, cinco, cinq — FIVE — is — oh, be still my heart — a 1920s Noël Coward thing about love, life, lust and who cares because now even grammar school kids are into that in the john before geography class. Been no new Noël Coward thing since his bar mitzvah.

“Titanique”? St. James Theatre. Four nominations. Stars the great Marla Mindelle so it has to be great. Because she’s great. Ungreat is that it already did its thing almost 10 years ago.

New? Like what beside the prices. In old days, cheapos would tip the ladies’ room matron a quarter. There’s now ticket prices, transportation costs, dinner costs, intermission drinks, which come to about what your divorced spouse is getting. Leave a quarter and your toilet tissue could suddenly be your cashmere.

1913 vaudeville crashed into our lives with Sophie Tucker, Sarah Bernhardt, Lillian Russell, Eva Tanguay, Harry Houdini. Twenty minutes later came John Barrymore whose relative Drew still pirouettes on what once was TV. Also we got Katharine Cornell.

Along comes possibly the initial rewrite of the primary draft of the first crayoned version of “Death of a Salesman.” Back then it was probably “Flu of a Shoemaker.”

Comes modern days. “Guys and Dolls,” “The King And I,” “The Seven Year Itch,” Helen Hayes, Katharine Hepburn, Joe Biden’s 200th birthday. Also Rex Harrison, another rererevival of “Pal Joey.” A rereresurrection of “Candida” flopped. But we got “South Pacific.” We did not get “The Hormuz Strait,” but, then, nobody’s got the Hormuz Strait.

Listen, some folks are so eager to be in showbiz that I know one guy who saw an ad in a theatrical paper that said: “Wanted. Human Cannonball. Must be able to travel.” And he applied.

Joking on an elite level

Meanwhile, Conan O’Brien who honed his theatrics at the Harvard Lampoon — class of ’85 — said to some Broadwayite: “I miss Harvard Square. Nowhere else will you find a man in a turban wearing a Red Sox jacket while working in a lesbian bookstore.” I mean, the man has standards. His literary thesis was on early senility.

One more on Conan just because I happen to have it. When he asked a hardware man how jumper cables work the guy said: “And you graduated from Harvard?”

So one writer murdered a comic in his column. But never mentioned the guy’s name. The comic threatened to sue. “But,” a friend said, “he didn’t mention your name.” “That’s it,” he complained, “Nobody’ll know it’s me!”

Only in New York, kids, only in New York.