The show is directed by James Lapine (Into the Woods). Gets describes his character as "very much like Walter Mitty: a little guy who wears a gray suit and writes letters to his mother. He likes everything to be neat and orderly. He goes to work every day, doesn't have any friends, doesn't have a girlfriend. He loves Isabelle [co-star Melissa Errico] from afar but never dreams that she'd ever look at him, because she's married and she's so beautiful. One day, he goes home and suddenly realizes that he's walked through the wall of his apartment building. In a lot of ways, Dusoleil feels very familiar to me. I have a place in my heart for him."

Gets first met Errico at Yale Drama School. "I was in graduate school and Melissa was an undergrad," he says. "Later, we did one of the big workshops for Triumph of Love. When she came aboard for Amour, I was so happy. I adore Melissa! She's extremely talented, unbelievably bright, very beautiful, and her voice meshes so well with Michel's music."

Having spent four seasons playing Richard, the caustic colorist on the TV sitcom Caroline in the City, Get has achieved the financial security to pursue theater work with greater freedom. "It's a much different experience now that I have a little nest egg," he says. "I loved working on television but I knew I wanted to come back to the stage. This is where my roots are. My mother saw an ad for the show and said, 'I see they have you in glasses again.' I wore glasses for Caroline and in a movie I did that's coming out in November. No matter what I do, there's part of me that feels that people want to see me as a geek. That's okay. Growing up, I studied classical piano; when I was in a second grade talent show and everyone else was singing John Denver or rock and roll, I played 'If Ever I Would Leave You.'"

Gets met Barbara Cook during a workshop for the Roundabout of a show comprised of Stephen Sondheim songs: "It was James Lapine's idea, but then Putting It Together came to Broadway and it just wasn't the time to do it." However, Cook invited Gets to join her at Carnegie Hall for her Mostly Sondheim concert there on February 2, 2001, a recording of which was released as a 2-CD set by DRG. In addition to duets with Cook, Gets performed a piece in which he combined songs from West Side Story with lines from Romeo and Juliet. Other Sondheim associations for Gets include the 1994 York Theatre Company production of Merrily We Roll Along (he won an Obie Award and a Drama Desk nomination for his performance as Franklin Shepard) and a 2001 Pittsburgh Civic Light Opera production of Company in which he starred as Bobby.

In 1997, Gets did The Boys from Syracuse for Encores! Also that year, he played Og, the leprechaun, in an L.A. Reprise! concert version of Finian's Rainbow. The latter, he claims, "was one of the easiest jobs I ever had. I was a last-minute replacement. Will Mackenzie, who directed, had done a lot of episodes of Caroline in the City. It's a brilliant score -- but the book is so tricky to get around that, these days, I think a concert version is the only way to do it."

He also was involved in a recent workshop with Graciela Daniele and Michael John LaChiusa, "and I can't wait for people to hear Michael John's new score. There are so many talented young composers: Adam Guettel, Jason Robert Brown, Ricky Ian Gordon. Thank God for CDs! A New Brain only ran four months but the CD has so much beautiful music. That show was such a brave undertaking.

"Amour is a challenge, too," says Gets. "Though it's a charming piece, it's just 'off' enough to not be a sure thing. But I think it's thrilling to be involved in things that are experimental and risky. It makes the heart go a little faster."