The Engineer, that unctuous “Miss Saigon” schemer embodied so unforgettably by Jonathan Pryce, has traded in his wide-lapeled jackets for chalk-stripe suits and taken his con to another French outpost – the Riviera.

Mr. Pryce, who has been AWOL from the New York stage since that Tony Award-winning triumph, is up to his old tricks, charming the pants (and jewels and cash) off of unsuspecting ladies. And this time he’s got better material, as he replaces John Lithgow in the breezy, bawdy “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels.”

Jeffrey Lane’s crisp book pits two con men – the dapper Lawrence Jameson (Mr. Pryce) and the gauche Freddy Benson (Norbert Leo Butz, the only holdover among the leads) – against one another in a resort town teeming with merry widows and gullible divorcees.The two team up uneasily for a series of scams that escalate into a win-orleave-town wager involving a wideeyed American named Christine Colgate (Rachel York). Bogus wheelchairs, squashed dogs, and all manner of double- and triple-crosses ensue, punctuated throughout by David Yazbek’s syncopated, pop-inflected score.

Even with Mr. Pryce on his best behavior, the sleaze quotient in “Scoundrels” is well-represented, thanks to Mr. Butz’s continued presence. Few images on Broadway right now compare to that of Ruprecht, one of Mr. Butz’s more grotesque personae (and that’s saying something), rooting around in his protruding belly button and singing of his fondness for “milkshake enemas” and “fresh-shaved testicles on Christmas Day.”

Mr. Butz, whose go-for-broke performance won him a Tony last year, has both fulfilled and confounded a prediction I made when the show opened last March: “The thought of seeing this performance in a few months, after [director Jack] O’Brien has moved on and audiences continue to give positive feedback, is a sobering one.”

Twelve months later, his performance has broadened more or less as expected. What I did not expect was that it would be better. Perhaps Mr. Butz is one of those rare overactors who actually knows how much is too much, or perhaps Mr. O’Brien – who controls pacing better than any director in town – has seen to it that things don’t get out of hand. Either way, Mr. Butz remains a most unlikely (and vocally underrated) leading man.

While he is by far the most shameless – and proficient – scene stealer on board, he has a new partner in crime: Mr. Pryce repeatedly engages the audience with a sort of debonair deadpan that sweeps the orchestra before rising imploringly toward the balcony. (Think of him as Jacques Benny.) He may not land quite as many gags as Mr. Lithgow did, but the con artists’ opposing styles are clearer now, which makes for a more balanced battle of wits.

Mr. Pryce is also by far a better singer than his predecessor, which proves useful during the show’s only straightforward ballad, “Love Sneaks In.” Even better are the pair of patter songs Lawrence sings while posing as an Austrian doctor. (“Undt everybody has to quoth / Zat zippy Hippy-cratic Oath.”) In the hands of a bona fide singer, about 75% of these lyrics are now intelligible, a considerable improvement from before.

The other cast replacements are solid if not as radical. Mylinda Hull (filling in for Sara Gettelfinger) is a blowsy blast as a gum-cracking, trigger-happy Oklahoma heiress who nearly botches a con. And Ms. York, whose blend of sex-kitten looks and sharp comic timing has quickened Broadway’s pulse since 1989’s “City of Angels,” is a worthy replacement for the gifted Sherie Rene Scott. Ms. York’s Christine is less girl next door and more gawky babe, in the style of television darlings like Brooke Shields and Jenna Elfman, but she proves a worthy comic foil to the con artists’ shenanigans and sounds terrific.

Thanks to Mr. Lane’s witty book and Mr. O’Brien’s whip-smart direction, “Scoundrels” remains an object lesson in how to embellish a film script without “fixing” what ain’t broke. (By following the 1988 film’s serpentine plot twists with complete fidelity, it’s one of the few musicals that works better if the source material isn’t fresh in your mind.)

That said, the show’s problems haven’t gone away: The material for secondary couple Joanna Gleason and Gregory Jbara remains a bit of a snore, choreographer Jerry Mitchell’s efforts are surprisingly lackluster, and Mr. Yazbek’s love for a topical giggle results in the occasional clunker of a lyric. (Live by jokes about Puff Daddy’s name, die by jokes about Puff Daddy’s name.) But “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels” was and is a low-class, high-energy treat – and one that, as evidenced by the smooth new cast, should keep fleecing Broadway audiences as long as it can find the right actors. Are you listening, James Naughton, Jack Black, and Alice Ripley?

***

When Primary Stages moved to its swanky new space on East 59th Street, theatergoers were confronted with a somewhat alien terrain – the Upper East Side. For the longest time, the closest the area came to a theatrical performance was a Broadway-themed shop window at Bloomingdale’s.

The 92nd Street Y is hoping to remedy that with what promises to be five nights of top-flight theatrical-literary pieces. If Monday’s commanding staging of Leo Tolstoy’s “Kreutzer Sonata” is any indication, discerning theatergoers may need to get reacquainted with the no. 6 train this spring.

You may know Larry Pine’s craggy face and reassuring voice from a few Woody Allen movies or from his Wallace Shawn-Andre Gregory collaborations – he was the kindly doctor in “Vanya on 42nd Street” and co-starred with Mr. Shawn in “The Designated Mourner.” This durable character actor has taken the time-honored route of landing a starring role by writing it himself: He and his wife, Margaret Pine (who also directs), have constructed a terse, gripping adaptation of Tolstoy’s 1890 testament to the ferocious, soul-uprooting powers of classical music.

Never mind the irony of the Pines’ adapting a novella that culminates in a man killing his wife (and whose glimpses into the author’s own marriage reportedly infuriated his wife upon publication). Mr. Pine gave an extraordinary rendition of the seething, nihilistic, explosively jealous man who’s undone by his wife’s involvement with a young violinist. Ms. Pine’s staging suffers from a glut of gimmicky sound effects and underscoring early on, but pianist Simone Dinnerstein and violinist Gil Morgenstern makes up for the sonic clutter with a chilling onstage performance of the eponymous Beethoven sonata.

“Art demands intimacy,” the anguished narrator explains, and the combination of Mr. Pine’s acutely drawn portrait and the exquisite onstage performance provides as much intimacy as any lover of Russian literature and/or classical music could hope for.

The 92nd Street Y’s series resumes Monday, and if “Kreutzer” is any indication, these theater pieces – not to mention an April 17 reading by Nobel laureate playwright Wole Soyinka – should be blue-chip additions to the spring season.

“Dirty Rotten Scoundrels” (249 W. 45th Street, between Broadway and Eighth Avenue, 212-239-6200).

Robert Fagles’s “The Odyssey,” March 13; “Samuel Beckett at 100: Three Plays,” April 3; Glyn Maxwell’s “The Sugar Mile,” May 15; Andre Gregory’s “Bone Songs,” May 24 (1395 Lexington Avenue at 92nd Street, 212-415-5500).