Marin Mazzie & Jason Danieley, Idina Menzel & Taye Diggs, Neil Patrick Harris & David Burtka. The world of Broadway is filled with successful thespians who share both their love for performing and their love for each other.

I had the privilege of working with one such couple—Melissa Rain Anderson (City Center’s Babes in Arms and Tenderloin) and Jim Poulos (Broadway’s Rent, and Little Shop of Horrors and The Graduate national tours) before they each had their New York successes.

I had a chance to chat with them recently and find out what they’ve been up to lately. We’ll catch up with Melissa this week, and Jim next week….

Man In Chair: One of the first memories of I have you. Melissa, is hearing an audition song you sang to show your range that combined something very belty, like “Dance 10 Looks 3” and something very colluratura’ish, like “Glitter and be Gay.” Does that sound familiar?

Melissa Rain Anderson: You have a good memory. It was “Dance 10 Looks 3”, and “Poor Wandering One” from Pirates of Penzance. All the way up to a high D! I actually belt a lot more now just because it goes with my type. One of the bigger things I did in New York right away was a belty role, so people tend to think of me that way.

MIC: You and I met in California when your husband Jim was in school at the Pacific Conservatory of Performing Arts, and we were all working there together. What brought you to New York?

MRA: Jim was cast in the Broadway production of Rent. The audition was in LA—a crazy open call, waiting in line in lawn chairs for hours and hours—and he got the call about three days later that they wanted him to replace in the Broadway company, and in two days, we were on a plane to New York.

MIC: How did you and Jim meet?

MRA: We both grew up in Northern California, and we had some mutual friends in high school. It was a five year thing where we kept coming in and out of each others’ lives. And then after college, we finally we realized what we had wasn’t just this casual relationship. In 1992 we moved in together, and we’ve been together ever since.

MIC: When were you married?

MRA: Summer of 2000. We were engaged for quite awhile. We needed to plan a wedding, and then he got Rent, and a million things happened so our engagement was very long. He left the show in May of 2000 and we had three months where we knew neither one of us had anything major, so we planned a wedding in that three months!

MIC: The “belty” role you mentioned earlier was Baby Rose in the City Center Encore Series’ Babes in Arms. Was that the first thing you were cast in in New York?

MRA: Yes. I’d been in New York for less than a year when I booked it, so I didn’t understand that getting to play a lead role in a City Center Encores Series show was such an honor. With Babes in Arms, they wanted to cast fresh, new talent. I was definitely the greenest. There was some young, fresh Broadway talent like Erin Dilly, but they still had credits, whereas I had none.

MIC: It’s funny that you were such a “babe” doing Babes in Arms.

MRA: Yeah, I was definitely of the hey-let’s-put-on-a-show mentality. I’m glad I didn’t quite know the pressure that was on me.

MIC: When you opened up the New York Times and read Ben Brantley describing you as a “belter with a velvet touch,” did that clue you in to the scope of the project?

MRA: I think I just sighed a big relief that he didn’t say something horrible. But it was an exciting day. My agent called, and Jimmy was screaming and running around—more than I was. Just like I was when he got Rent. I was jumping off the walls and he was pretty quiet.

MIC: Well it’s good to have each other for those necessary reactions. You sang “Johnny One Note” [click link and “open” for a sample] in Babes in Arms, and later your rendition of it was included on the “Best of City Center Encores” CD, alongside Nathan Lane, Bebe Neuwirth, and Rebecca Luker. Has that become your “signature song?”

MRA: It’s funny, I would go into auditions and sing something that was appropriate for the show I was auditioning for, something contemporary or something high, and they would say “Can you sing ‘Johnny One Note?’” (laughs) And I started to feel that they just called me in because “Oh that’s the girl who sang that part…”

MIC: You also did City Center Encores’ production of Tenderloin, and recorded the cast album as well. Tell us a little about the process of recording an album, for those of who are only familiar with the end result.

MRA: It’s thrilling! Rob Fisher is conducting his Coffee Club Orchestra and it’s absolutely thrilling to be singing with them in a recording studio in the middle of Manhattan. Then you walk outside and there’s New York City, and you’re on 43rd Street, and you go “This is part of the lore. I’m now part of the New York story.” It’s pretty exciting.

We had a great time recording it too. They didn’t cut corners. We had a couple of days to do it, and then we came back for some fixes later. The people from the R&H foundation were there making sure it sounded to their liking. We all take our shoes off, and we’re barefoot, so we’re all feeling grounded.

The thing about recording is that you really have to do it at performance level or else it reads kind of “square.” So we’re all smiling and looking at each other and remembering what it was like to be onstage with each other.

MIC: Then came Bessie in Manhattan Theatre Club’s musicalization of Jack Finney’s celebrated novel, Time and Again. Although the show didn’t get great reviews, the Village Voice said that since you were among the cast it should have “blazed much brighter.” Has there been any reworking of the show that you know of?

MRA: I haven’t heard of any reworking. We did a workshop of it, with 25 people and then they decided to do a chamber version at Manhattan Theatre Club. The cast got cut down to 14, and we did it in the small space at MTC. It lost a lot of its luster by cutting the numbers down as far as it did. And the magic of time travel that needs to be conveyed really couldn’t be in that small of a space. I think it got squelched. And it’s too bad because it’s a lovely story with a luscious and gorgeous score. At that point, it had been about 11 years in the making.

MIC: After that you went on the road in South Pacific with Robert Goulet. How did you like being on the road?

MRA: I actually loved it. The travel got hard sometimes, but we ended up having a great group to travel with. The hardest part was being away from Jim. But the great part of it was that at the end of the tour they needed another guy for the ensemble, so we got to go out together. And that was heaven. We would do it again in a heartbeat.

MIC: During that tour, you took some time off to do Convenience by Gregg Coffin. Tell me a little bit about the show.

MRA: It’s a piece about a 26 year old young man coming back to his single mom. They’re trying to find each other and find the relationship that they used to have when he was a young boy of six. There are “ghosts” of the mother at 28 and the son at 6 years old who still live in the house with the mom, frozen in time on the night that the father (her husband) left them. It’s heart wrenching, and very beautiful.

MIC: Who did you play in the show?

MRA: I played the young version—the 28 year old version of the mom [click link for audio sample]. And then Jim, my husband, played the 26 year old version of the son. So in essence we’re really playing mother and son.

MIC: Where does the title come from?

MRA: It’s about the things we take for granted in our lives and the way we choose to live our life because it’s convenient or easy for us to do so. When it’s inconvenient is when it gets hard, but if we shy away from the inconvenience then we never grow.

The other interesting thing about the title is that if you look at the word “convenience,” the letters V-I-N-C-E, the young man’s name, are in there as part of the word.

MIC: That Gregg Coffin’s a clever guy! Speaking of Gregg Coffin, you’ve been directing of some of his works as well. You directed his original musical, Five Course Love in Houston and are set to direct rightnexttome in Sacramento coming up soon. How did you make this transition to directing and add yet another skill to your resume?

MRA: I started in college. I assisted one of my professors on a bunch of things, and I took a couple of his directing classes. Because I work so much at Geva Theatre in Rochester, New York, I have a connection with the Nazareth College of Rochester. They’ve asked me to direct a couple of musicals there.

When Gregg knew that I was really starting to direct professionally, he helped me get the jobs to direct his stuff. The show at Stages Repertory Theatre in Houston, where I did Five Course Love, went great.

Now we’re working on righnexttome, which is a new musical he’s writing—he actually hasn’t even finished writing it yet. We are workshopping it here at Geva next week, and then we go into rehearsals in late December in Sacramento at the B Street Theatre. It’s strange to be saying “I’m directing a show, and act two hasn’t been written yet.”

MIC: You said earlier that you had just finished two sets of 10 out of 12’s [tech rehearsals]. What have you been working on?

MRA: I’ve been assisting my good friend Tim Ocel, who’s a great director, for a couple of years. We opened Sherlock Holmes: The Final Adventure—the new Steven Dietz version of Sherlock Holmes—at Geva about a month ago. It was a co-production with the Cleveland Playhouse. I went with the stage manager, and the artistic director of Geva, for the “put in” in Cleveland.

Then I came back to Rochester, and immediately went into tech rehearsals for my own show, Where’s Charley, which I’m directing at Nazareth.

So that’s been my life for about a week—twelve hours a day in a dark theatre. I really do appreciate the work so much. It really feeds me, being on this side of the table. And I think that’s its probably going to end up being 80 to 90 percent of my work. If I get the chance to choose, I would choose to direct.

When I started down this directing road, I had to decide whether I was going to go back to school and get a Masters, or use the resources and connections I already had. I’ve worked on three projects with Tim, and then have been directing on my own as well. Any time I get the chance to assist him, if I have the time in my calendar I go and do it, because I learn so much by not having all the responsibility, but seeing it through his eyes and helping from that angle.

MIC: And it’s less expensive than graduate school!

MRA: Yes, a lot less expensive.

MIC: It sounds like you’ve come a long way from being a babe in the arms of New York City so many years ago.

MRA: I guess so!

MIC: Thanks for chatting with us today. Melissa.

MRA: Thank you! It was fun.

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