The name is Sara Ramirez. And the first name is pronounced “Sada.” She’s been correcting people on that her entire professional life. She may not have to much longer.

Ms. Ramirez constitutes nearly the entire feminine side of the musical “Monty Python’s Spamalot,” the highly anticipated musical comedy that Chicago critics have promised will swallow Broadway. (Previews for the musical, inspired by the film “Monty Python and the Holy Grail,” began Monday.) And though she is surrounded by a quintet of big-name male costars and collaborators – creator Eric Idle, director Mike Nichols, and stars Tim Curry, Hank Azaria, and David Hyde Pierce – it was Ms. Ramirez whom Windy City critics most often singled out.

“For sheer star power, there is Sara Ramirez,” wrote Hedy Weiss in the Chicago Sun-Times, “with her voluptuous figure and a gargantuan voice that moves from opera to jazz to Dietrich and Cher with stunning ease.” The Chicago Tribune called her “the lost Python member.” Variety labeled two of her three songs “genuine showstoppers.”

The notices sent industry types rifling through their files to get a second look at the 29-year-old’s resume. Educated at Juilliard (impressive); Broadway debut: Paul Simon’s “The Capeman” (yikes!); next show “Fascinating Rhythm” (another flop); then “A Class Act” (ditto). This row of credits notwithstanding, the general feeling around Broadway is that Ms. Ramirez was always a talent waiting to happen.

“I think everyone in the theater community knew how extraordinary she was,” said Lonny Price, who directed and co-starred with Ms. Ramirez in “A Class Act.” “It was just a question of finding the right role for her.” Mr. Price took all of a few minutes to cast her. “It may have been the only time where I said, ‘Wait out in the hall,’ and then I looked at everybody and said, ‘Can I just give her the job?'” He even added a song to the score, “Don’t Do It Again,” to beef up her part.

Mike Nichols, too, needed little persuasion. Ms. Ramirez – who until recently lived in Los Angeles – happened to be visiting friends in New York when her agent sent her in to audition for “Spamalot.” She read a two page scene, sang two songs on the stage of the Shubert Theater, and left. A couple of days later, she had a callback and did the same again, only for more people. “An hour later – I had my bags packed because I was leaving the next day – my agent called me.” She had landed the role of her career in less than 72 hours.

“She was always at the top of my list,” said the casting director of “Spamalot,” Tara Rubin, “because we needed someone beautiful and powerful and funny for that role.”

On stage, Sara Ramirez does have an outsized presence. The voice is titanic. The exaggerated lines of her figure lend themselves to comedy, with fierce eyes and a mouth for which Medea would kill (again). In person, the effect is toned down. Still, her 5-foot-9-inch frame sets her apart, as do hair and pupils that the DMV has credited as brown but fall jet black on the eyes.

In “Spamalot,” Ms. Ramirez plays “The Lady of the Lake,” who is mentioned in the film but never seen. Did the famous British comedy troupe – quotes from which have filled the vocabulary of generations of male college students – enjoy a place in her life before the first audition? “Honestly, no,” she admitted. “And I’m so ashamed. I rented everything I could get my hands on before the audition. So I appreciated it before I walked in.”

Her luck did not end after the audition. The show was originally to feature another actress. Late in the game, however, the creators decided to fold the additional acting duties into Ms. Ramirez’s job description. “So they had me come in and read for the other parts,” she explained, “which is hilarious, because now they don’t exist. They’ve all been cut. It’s just one streamlined role now.”

She didn’t peruse the Windy City reviews. But others did. “My mother read something about me that made her happy and she cried,” she related. “My family cries a lot. We cry at almost anything.”

Ms. Ramirez was born in Mazatlan, on Mexico’s Pacific coast, to a Mexican father and American mother of Mexican-Irish descent. When her parents divorced, she and her mother moved to San Diego. “I came to the U.S. with an accent,” she remembered. “I had lots of culture shock. Being a Mexican in San Diego can feel odd, because I think some Mexican-Americans have a not very positive energy about being themselves. There are lots of issues. You would feel a little singled out at times.”

Her mother, who had pursued acting and singing, enrolled her in the fourth grade at the San Diego School of Creative and Performing Arts. She stayed until the 12th. A Mexican accent became a Valley accent, which in turn was erased by four years at Juilliard. “You’re going to this school where the drama division is basically stripping away all that’s identified you,” she laughed. “And then you graduate and you say, ‘Oh my God, who the hell am I now?'”

Who she was was an employed actress. Before leaving school, she was cast in “The Capeman.” That 1998 show has since entered the Broadway annals as one of the most hexed stage enterprises of all time. But, aside from a Broadway paycheck, Ms. Ramirez saved a few other valuables from the good ship “Capeman” before it sank.

“I learned how Broadway operates, the ins and outs, politics,” she said. “I learned that not everything’s guaranteed. I learned a great deal from Paul Simon in terms of music. I learned a great deal from [director] Jerry Zaks about storytelling. And I’d never been in a show with other Latinos before.”

“It made me focus on my own culture and appreciated where I was from,” she continued. “For a very long time I was embarrassed and scared. I didn’t like correcting people about my name and speaking Spanish. When I was little, you were internalizing people’s projects about you, the negativity about where you were from – the other side of the border, a green card, and all that stuff.”

“There was a life-changing moment in college where I recognized all those issues and dealt with them, and started to see the positives of speaking another language, of coming from another country, and having another culture. And the beauty of my name. Yes, some people tell me, You’ve got to change that Ramirez s–, ’cause that ain’t gonna work!’ I listened and I decided no.”

Seeing your name on a marquee can make such decisions easier.

The Shubert Theatre (225 W. 44th Street, 212-239-6200).