Brian d’Arcy James

From late January of this year until the end of March, Brian d’Arcy James got loaded eight times a week, turned his teetotal sweetheart into a lush and then struggled for sobriety, in the limited-run Broadway production of “Days of Wine And Roses.”

Come Sunday matinees, Mr. James, a Tony nominee for his performance as Jack Daniel’s best friend (the awards ceremony is June 16), could have been forgiven for an eagerness to hit the road instead of the sauce.

Destination: Fairfield County, in Connecticut, where he and his wife, Jennifer Prescott, an actor and documentary filmmaker, own a weekend home.

“I wouldn’t say that I counted the minutes,” said the very affable Mr. James, 55, whose Broadway credits include “Hamilton,” “Something Rotten!” and “Into the Woods,” and who had a principal role in the 2015 Oscar-winning movie “Spotlight.” But “everything about the show was so demanding — emotionally, technically and physically — that when the Sunday matinees were over, the idea of having a place to go and just recoup … it was just, ‘Oh, my god, thank god.’”

The object of his gratitude is a midcentury-modern house set on five bosky acres.

“I think back to one of our early days at the house,” Mr. James said. “I was reading a script that someone had asked me to look at. And I remember feeling, ‘This is everything I could ever want. I’m doing the thing I love while sitting in my house. And I have this really warm fireplace.’ I’ll never forget that feeling.”

He and Ms. Prescott, parents of a 22-year-old daughter, began their hunt for a place in the country in 2008, motivated, Mr. James said, by the desire to have somewhere to go “and breathe a little bit.” At the time, he was starring in “Shrek the Musical,” so he left the winnowing to his wife, looking at the top prospects on Mondays, when the theater was dark.

The couple, whose primary residence is a two-bedroom rental on the Upper West Side, quickly fixed on 90 minutes as the outer limit acceptable for a commute. Conveniently, that parameter placed them in an area where they had friends from the theater community.

“And then we found this great place,” Mr. James said, ticking off some points of appeal: Inside, there’s the bluestone hearth and the walls covered in knotty cypress planks; outside, there are trees — lots of trees.

“As my wife says, even if the house had been a teardown, we would have probably bought it because the land is so great,” said Mr. James, who walked the perimeter while memorizing his lines for “Days of Wine and Roses.” “Fortunately, that wasn’t the case. It’s a really nice, sweet little house for the three of us.”

But few places are so nice that they couldn’t stand some improvement. Among other things, Mr. James and Ms. Prescott added insulation, upgraded the floor-to-ceiling windows and transoms, had an additional window installed to bring in more light, expanded the bathroom on the second floor …

… and renovated the galley kitchen, extending the countertop so there would be room to sit down and eat.

They also bumped out the patio and lengthened the deck, painting the front door a particularly fetching shade of blue.

Ms. Prescott served as chairman of the decorating committee. Inside, she hewed to the house’s midcentury-modern design, buying pieces from Design Within Reach and CB2, and earth-toned rugs from West Elm.

“It isn’t expensive stuff,” she said. “But it’s in the right style.”

The couple met when they were cast as members of the ensemble and dance partners in the 1994 revival of “Carousel” at Lincoln Center.

“It was fun for me, but not so fun for Jen,” Mr. James said. “Because she’s a dancer, and I’m not.”

Never mind all that. Clearly, the partnership stuck. And to celebrate its beginning, a poster from the production hangs on the second-floor landing.

Across the driveway is a 16-by-22-foot prefabricated shed. This space serves alternately as a workout-and-yoga studio, a guest room, an office, a place for vocalizing and — not that Mr. James would admit this publicly (his wife would cringe if he did) — a man cave.

The shed holds the Baldwin upright piano that he played as a child, and that his mother sent him as a wedding gift some 25 years ago.

Atop the piano are the Grammy Award for the cast recording of “Into the Woods” and a Screen Actors Guild award that Mr. James received as part of the ensemble of “Spotlight.”

Nearby hangs a gift that John Lithgow gave his co-star Mr. James on the closing night of the 2002 Broadway adaptation of the movie “Sweet Smell of Success”: a print of Al Hirschfeld’s caricature of the principal performers.

“It was wonderful, and something I never would have had the wherewithal to get on my own,” said Mr. James, who played Sidney Falco to Mr. Lithgow’s J.J. Hunsecker. Also in the cast: his “Days of Wine and Roses” leading lady, Kelli O’Hara.

A small alcove holds a desk. (This is the office portion of the shed.)

Behind the desk are shelves that hold several other awards, as well as a cache of Toby mugs. Mr. James’s late father collected them, “and I’ve kind of stolen them from my parents’ house as time has gone by,” he said. “They pop up all over our apartment and house, perhaps to my wife’s chagrin.”

One shelf below is a photo of a 10-year-old Mr. James with his father, both dressed as riverboat gamblers. “I lost my dad when he was 50,” he said quietly. “He was a great guy, and he was my hero. So I love having him around whenever I can.”