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For Promises, Promises actress Katie Finneran and La Cage aux Folles actor Robin de Jesús, a brief encounter with a Broadway audience is all it takes to create real lasting power.

Though the two spend less than 25 minutes on stage in their respective shows, they wring every drop of humor from their time in the spotlight and still manage to garner exit applause on the way out. Finneran took home the Tony Award this year for Best Supporting Actress in a Musical (she won her first Tony for her work in the 2002 revival of Noises Off), and de Jesús scooped up his second nomination in the Best Supporting Actor in a Musical category.

"I think it's tricky to come into a show after it's already started [and] ask the audience to accept a character," says Finneran, who doesn't make her first entrance until the second act. "Sean's been out there with the audience for an hour and a half. I just have to relax and come in and do it." Finneran also coyly reveals that she's able to gauge the audience's energy thanks to a trap door that opens from her dressing room bathroom directly into one of the boxes in the Broadway Theatre.

Sharing the stage with Hayes, who established his own comic prowess on the TV show "Will & Grace," is not hard, says Finneran.

"The chemistry was immediate. We have free room for comedic failure. One's not funny without the other. It's a real math problem. You either get the right numbers and get a huge laugh, or you don't."

To define her role, Finneran was determined to be the opposite of Fran, the heartsick secretary played by Kristin Chenoweth. "I wanted to have the really low voice, very dark hair, dark clothing and high heels. Classy, but trampy, and try to be the opposite of that thing Chuck is in love with."

Decked out in a wrap made of owl feathers, Marge employs an owl "hoo" as an inebriated mating call. Finneran kept busy during rehearsals by researching. "They actually have crazy owl fan websites with hundreds of samples of real owl sounds," she says. "I went through all of them and found the one that I liked the best: the Western Screech Owl. I seriously did it as a joke in rehearsal."

The Tony Award–winning "hoo" was kept, and the rest is history.