One man is a Broadway star whose parents fled Cuba, an actor who may well find that the third time as a Tony Award nominee will be the charm. Another is a producer with endless drive and a fondness for musicals that make people happy. The third, also the son of Cuban immigrants, is an orchestrator, arranger and musical director who has achieved Broadway acclaim despite a hearing loss that goes back to childhood.

When nominees for the 62nd annual Tony Awards are read out at Manhattan's Radio City Music Hall Sunday evening, the folks watching the WFOR-CBS 4 broadcast in South Florida will hear three familiar names: Raúl Esparza (the Broadway star), Adam Epstein (the producer) and Alex Lacamoire (the musical whiz).

RAUL ESPARZA

Esparza, 37, has been nominated as best featured actor in a play for his performance as Lenny in the revival of Nobel Prize winner Harold Pinter's The Homecoming. The limited-run production closed April 13, but the mere fact that the acclaimed revival of Pinter's mysterious play about a family's predatory men is already history won't hurt his chances. None of the other nominees in his category is in a still-running show either.

Sitting in the Radio City crowd, nervously listening for the name that will follow ''and the Tony goes to'' isn't a new experience for the versatile Esparza, who has become one of Broadway's most sought-after leading men in just six years. In 2004, he was up for best featured actor in a musical for his work in the ill-fated Taboo; last year, he was favored to win best actor in a musical for his portrayal of Bobby in the revival of Company, though he lost to Curtains star David Hyde Pierce.

''I didn't expect this one at all,'' Esparza said the day after the Tony nominations were announced last month. ``We won the Drama Desk Award for outstanding ensemble performance, and that's the award it deserves.''

Even so, says the actor who was lauded by The New York Times for his ''benchmark''' performance as the pimp Lenny, ``you have to live up to something. There's a sense of what came before you.''

ADAM EPSTEIN

Epstein, 33, a Miami Beach Senior High School grad who shared the 2002 best musical Tony for Hairspray, can relate to the notion of living up to what came before. He's a lead producer of Cry-Baby, one of four shows nominated as best musical. Like Hairspray, the show is based on a John Waters movie; unlike that earlier hit, Cry-Baby got much less ecstatic reviews.

Epstein, who spent three years guiding Cry-Baby toward Broadway, is pragmatic about what he needs to do to keep a show he calls ''a subversive lark'' going.

''I have to be a leader, keep morale high and say we're gonna win the war. Building an audience takes time,'' says the young producer.

Though Epstein will get valuable national television exposure for Cry-Baby at Broadway's biggest party, the musical most likely to take the Tony home is In the Heights, Lin-Manuel Miranda's stirring celebration of life in the largely Latino Washington Heights neighborhood of Manhattan.

ALEX LACAMOIRE

Miranda is responsible for the show's musical blend of hip-hop and Latino styles, but the guy who made the lush score sound the way it does is the 33-year-old Lacamoire. He's nominated (along with Bill Sherman) for the Tony for best orchestrations.

Lacamoire got his early musical training at the New World School of the Arts high school. He had been playing for community theater productions since he was a 13-year-old in middle school; at New World, he became a go-to rehearsal pianist and accompanist.

Though he has worn hearing aids since he was 4 (''I have a slight hearing loss; I don't have a lot of high frequencies,'' he says), he has quickly become a sought-after Broadway musical director and arranger -- in the fall, he'll be working on the stage musical version of Nine to Five.

Whatever happens at the Tonys, Lacamoire knows exactly where he'll be just before 8 p.m. on Tuesday: Sitting in the pit at Broadway's Richard Rodgers Theatre, getting ready to conduct yet another performance of In the Heights.

''I have the best seat in the house,'' he says. ``Guaranteed.''

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