What do they learn of marriage by playing married?

For years, Chanhassen Dinner Theatres had a license to print money with "I Do! I Do!" Granted, the mint was in the small Playhouse Theatre downstairs, but the venerable musical covered the same ground -- the life cycle of a married couple from the time they cross the threshold to the time they hobble back out the door. "Married Alive!" is touted as a 21st-century update of "I Do! I Do!" This time, two couples -- a pair of giddy newlyweds, and two who have been around the block more times than they'd care to admit -- poke at the foibles of married life. Robb McKindles and Nicole Fenstad play the youngsters, Tod Petersen and Seri Johnson the oldsters.

The show opens this week in the Fireside Theatre. The actors talked about how the musical mixes reality into its fiction.

Q What have you learned about love and marriage?

Tod: There's the line at the end of the play in which he says, "I loved it all. I wouldn't change a thing." I made it to six years in a relationship twice, but I never made it to that depth. When the character talks about waking up beside you so many mornings, it's about more than bad breath. It is about the humanity of being together.

Seri: It's companionship. Learning from each other. How you push each other's buttons. It's a journey.

Robb: It's all true. The only difference is it's a musical with 20-odd mini-plays. But they are related to absolute truth. There's a part of the play about having a conversation about having children. And the man starts thinking about numbers, what's practical. And that's the same thing I felt -- how can I afford this? And for my wife, it means something more about starting a family.

Q There's a scene about a long-distance relationship. Have you been in that situation?

Nicole: I have been, and it never worked for me. You need the day-to-day life, and not just the moments when you're trying so hard to make it special because you don't see each other very often. You don't get the sense of real life.

Tod: Me, neither. I had a number of relationships that didn't endure because we were apart, and, well, boys will be boys.

Seri: I spent a lot of time on the road, and travel is a relationship killer. I knew it wouldn't work. Especially if you don't have time.

Q There's a lot of sex in the show?

Tod: There's a scene where I dress up like Zorro and Seri has a schoolgirl outfit on, but then we realize I haven't taken my Viagra. Sex is a clear pathway to intimacy.

Seri: It's not the activity so much as the time spent around it.

Robb: Yeah, there's a difference between sex and intimacy, pillow talk.

Nicole: You develop an emotional intimacy with someone through pillow talk.

Tod: You talk about your day.

Seri: My character talks about her life and what she's accomplished, or hasn't accomplished, and then she says, "But that's OK, I found you."

Tod: That's a moment of discovery. Here we are in year 24 of our marriage and she's talking through her feelings and I realize I haven't helped her.

Q There's a lot of kissing?

Tod: These two [McKindles and Fenstad] are making out all the time.

Nicole: It's professionalism all the way.

Tod: Oh, bull, bull, bull.

Robb: No, that's where you start from, with professionalism.

Tod: I'm just jealous because you get to play in that arena. I never get scenes where I get to kiss a guy. But come on, it's got to be fun. The blood has to rush.

Robb: When I met my wife, we were doing a play in which two characters have an affair and I swear she looked dizzy after the first time we kissed. That kiss was so good. And that was the last time I had to kiss someone onstage until now. So we were about two weeks into rehearsal and I thought, "I should talk to my wife about this." So I said to her, "Do you think, hypothetically, if I was in a play in which I had to kiss someone a lot, I should tell you now or just wait for you to see it?" And there was a pause, and a slow burn and she asked, "Do you have to kiss someone a lot? I think you should tell me." And she turned back to watch TV.

Nicole: It's all choreographed. There are boundaries all the time.

Q As an actor, are you affected by the intimacy?

Robb: You're not worth your salt as an actor if it's not affecting you. We did a scene for the call-back and it's not that I said, "Hi, I'm Robb, let's make out." But we did talk about it and said, "Do you want to just go for it?" The chemistry supports it. You know you can trust this person.

Tod: It felt right when we checked in together at auditions.

Seri: I thought, he's the one.

Tod: I didn't want to go see all my friends or talk, or do the whole cocktail thing. I just wanted to sit with Seri before we auditioned, and afterward we all got to celebrate together.

Seri: It was a rare real moment.

Tod: We even went on a double date, the four of us. We went to see "42nd Street."

Graydon Royce • 612-673-7299