Homing In on Home

For his latest stage role, Michael Spound has begun taking pointers from 12-week-old son Zachary.

“My character has an interesting personality flaw,” says the actor, who opens this weekend--opposite Courteney Cox and Ed Winter--in a revival of the Jean Kerr/Eleanor Brooke comedy “The King of Hearts” at the Tiffany Theatre.

“When he gets in an argument, he throws up. No, I will not be doing that on stage. I don’t think people will pay to see me throw up. But I have been doing most of my research on Zachary.”

Fittingly, the role calls for Spound (who is married to his former “Hotel” co-star Heidi Bohay) to share the stage with three child actors--plus a dog.

“Ed and Courteney and I are going to have to be really good,” he says, mindful of W. C. Fields’ adage about kids and dogs. The 1950s-set story concerns “a very self-absorbed cartoonist who’s adopting a kid and is about to marry his beautiful secretary and go off on a honeymoon--but he needs someone to ghostwrite his cartoon strip while he’s gone. I come in and fall in love with the kid, the dog and the secretary . . . but not necessarily in that order.”

Actually, this isn’t Spound’s first time with “King of Hearts”: He played one of the kids (“I was a precocious moppet”) in his stage debut 23 years ago in Concord, Mass.

For the actor, the only downside of doing this play is spending time away from home. “Heidi and I are both working right now,” he says.

“She’s in ‘After Hours’ (an upcoming magazine TV show on Fox), so I have all day with Zachary before I have to go to rehearsals. In the past when I’d do a play or a series, I’d always go out with the cast afterwards. Now I race home. Life has become centered around Zachary and Heidi, not my career. The career will happen or not happen. But I can’t control that.”