Irving Berlin’s White Christmas is back at the Marriott Marquis Theatre for the second straight holiday season, bringing to Broadway the warmth of a lighthearted romantic comedy and the elegance of the composer’s quintessentially American songs.

It’s hard to go wrong when a show is endowed with a score that boasts a title song like “White Christmas,” “Blue Skies,” “I Love a Piano,” “I’ve Got My Love to Keep Me Warm,” Count Your Blessings,” “Sisters,” and “Happy Holiday.”  

The stage musical, an adaptation of the 1954 film that starred Bing Crosby, Danny Kaye, Rosemary Clooney and Vera-Ellen, came to life with additional songs and a more detailed plot in 2004, and had already begun touring the country before it arrived on Broadway last year under the direction of Tony winner Walter Bobbie (Chicago) and choreography by Randy Skinner (42nd Street).             

“It’s a beautiful story,” says Melissa Errico, who plays Betty Haynes, one-half of a singing sister act that meets a famous song-and-dance team. Together, the four help save the Vermont inn owned by the hoofers’ crusty-but-beloved World War II veteran, General Henry Waverly, played by M*A*S*H alumnus David Ogden Stiers.            

“This man, the general, is kind of lost up in Vermont,” Errico says. “His life is perhaps crumbling and all these crazy people are coming up to help; it’s so generous, and so sweet. We’re singing and dancing in this barn, and you can feel all this kind of love.”            

The show is a perfectly baked vintage musical soufflé. The sisters (Errico and Mara Davi, who plays Judy) are booked to perform at the Vermont inn. Bob Wallace (James Clow) and Phil Davis (Tony Yazbeck) are headed for a gig in Miami, but the skirt-chasing Phil -- smitten with Judy -- tricks Bob onto the train to Vermont, which, they discover, is in the midst of a fluke winter heat wave.

At the inn, the general is adjusting poorly to civilian life a decade after the war. His nosy-body concierge, Martha Watson (Ruth Williamson), tries to keep him from learning about the inn’s mounting debts, while Susan (Madeleine Rose Yen), the spunky granddaughter who adores the old soldier, is fascinated by all the showbiz shenanigans that unfold when Wallace and Davis summon their singing and dancing cohorts up north.

Last year, while starring in White Christmas in Detroit, Stiers told the Flint Journal that it is about an “America we all like to think we remember, where we were decent people who did not, when a problem arose, have the option of flipping on Dr. Phil or Oprah.”

“David’s been doing this for years, but he’s still so moved by it,” observes Errico.

Unlike Stiers and much of the cast, Errico had never performed in White Christmas before. In fact, she did not expect to return to Broadway so soon after giving birth to twin daughters earlier this year. She and husband ESPN sportscaster Patrick McEnroe -- brother of John and current captain of the US Davis Cup team -- also have a three-year-old, and until Bobbie approached her to audition, she was busy being a mom and overseeing Bowery Babes, a support group for mothers she founded in 2006.   

As a result, the first few days of rehearsals for White Christmas -- “boot camp,” she calls it -- required an adjustment. “I’ve had twins and now I’m dancing in four-inch heels and pencil skirts and learning a feather dance,” she says. “I can put a Barbie Dream House together in a second, but now I have to think, ‘Left-right, left-right, spin.’”

Irving Berlin’s White Christmas is playing through January 3rd at The Marquis Theatre, Broadway & 46th St. at the Marriott Marquis Hotel. For reservations call 212-307-4100 or click here.