A blossoming friendship with a special Cincinnati cat has added a new dimension to Brad Little's portrayal of the Phantom in "The Phantom of the Opera."

Little, who is starring in Andrew Lloyd Webber's sensation at the Aronoff Center for the Arts by night, has spent several days the Cincinnati Zoo, where he has befriended Maya, the zoo's female cheetah.

Maya's beauty and power have affected Little so much that he has incorporated some of her qualities into the persona of the anguished and lovelorn Phantom.

"We hit it off," Little said. "She tends to take to me. She has brought something to my life that I will never, ever forget."

"What's amazing is how much I have brought Maya into the Phantom, just by watching her. I see her do something, and I say, That is gorgeous," and I find myself bringing that onto the stage. It's a power she has. And what the Phantom is wanting is power."

Little has told Cathryn Hilker, head of the zoo's Cat Ambassador Program, that he will do whatever he can to help Maya, who has been "under the weather," possibly because of the cold temperatures. But Little, a lyric baritone, has stopped short of signing to the big cat.

"I'm too shy to do it when other people are around," he confessed.

While Maya has added an element of power and mystery to Little's Phantom, the singers own experience with dyslexia has helped him express the Phantom's suffering. (The Phantom, in Lloyd Webber's version of the story is a gifted composer who has suffered from a lifetime of ostracism because of facial deformities.)

"I used a lot of that experience with dyslexia when I was working with the Phantom," he said. "As a child I learned something of the pain of being beaten up and being outcast."

"I know the pain of what it can be like to be alone. There were kids who were very rude and mean - you know how kids can be - and for the longest time I thought I was mentally handicapped."

"When I started schooling I realized I was having trouble reading. We went through all the reading courses, and I thought for many years that I was mentally handicapped. I thought I was stupid. Later, I came to realize that I wasn't. But I still have problems with it."

Even today, Little avoids reading books. He says he leaves the family's "book smarts" to his wife, Barbara Mcculloh, an actress and Phi Beta Kappa who is appearing in the Broadway production of "The King and I."

Dyslexia propelled Little towards music. He was never able to read music proficiently, but he flourished as a singer because of his ear, voice and memory.

"My ear is one of my greatest talents," he said. "I will have someone teach me music by playing a song three time, and I'll have it down. I don't really read the music. I can see it a third or a half step; I can see it and I'll know it if I hear it. But my eye-to-brain reaction isn't fast enough for me to actually read at the speed it has to be read. I could never play the piano for that reason. It just won't compute."

No one who has seen Little on stage would ever guess at his struggles. He is a consummate performer who never allows less-than-an-all-out performance. Since the Cincinnati run of "Phantom of the Opera" began on Dec. 4, he has given eight performances a week. The performances are so physically demanding, he said, that when he comes off stage he can barley move.

Little admits that his voice often gets tired.

"There are times when I go on stage when it is very tired, and I am amazed that it can kick in. I'll be impressed that I could actually get through that one, because I could barley talk during the day."

Little, under contract to play the Phantom through next fall, can't say how long he will remain in the role. "Your body tells you that," he said. "It's similar to an athlete....If I chose, I could almost make a full-life career out of doing the Phantom. But I'm sure there will come a day when I'll have to call it quits. Then I would go audition and be unemployed until I found another job."

Perhaps, with a little inspiration from Maya, Little will want to try another of Lloyd Webber's musical blockbusters. "Cats."

      There's a changing of the guard this week in the dark, musty lower depths of the Paris Opera House. Ted Keegan, who's been playing the title role in the national touring production of Andrew Lloyd Webber's "The Phantom of the Opera," now at the Capitol Theatre, is leaving Salt Lake City to return to the Broadway cast. He'll be replaced, starting with the Wednesday night performance, by Brad Little, who's been touring with the company for the past two and one-half years.

      Little, who was playing the role of Raoul in the Broadway production at the time he was promoted to Phantom in the touring company, was nearing the end of a three-month vacation and busy packing for a benefit concert in Cincinnati, Ohio, when he was interviewed by phone from his apartment in New York City.

      (Two years ago, playing the Phantom in Cincinnati, he befriended an ailing cheetah named Maya at the city's zoo. He has since become involved in efforts to preserve the African cheetah, which was the reason for the benefit concert.)

      Little notes that he can identify and sympathize with the feared Phantom's intense, internal anguish. The singer/performer has dyslexia, a medical glitch that he struggled with while growing up in Redlands, Calif.

      "I like to visit with school children when I'm on the road, doing seminars with teachers and helping dyslexic children cope with self-esteem," he said. "It's amazing the number of friends I've made — from elementary to high school kids. I really try to help them just as much as I possibly can, just getting through life.

      "One of the stories I tell the kids is about how I coped in class; like when the teacher would go up and down the rows and each pupil would take turns reading one paragraph out of a storybook. I would count the paragraphs and then I'd count the number of kids that would get to me, and then I'd memorize that one paragraph. I learned a lot of memorizing skills that way.

      "But, of course, the teacher would always stop and tell the girl sitting in front of me 'Go ahead and read the next paragraph' — and then I'd have to memorize the next paragraph even quicker! By then, I'd have no idea of what the story was even about, but I sure had my paragraph memorized," he said.

      The skills he picked up learning how to memorize have suited him well in his theater career.
      "Now, the most nightmarish time for me is the very first day of rehearsal, because they usually do what is called a 'table reading.' Everybody sits around a big table and we read through the entire show.

      "As far as auditions go, though, I always tell them I'm dyslexic and ask if it's OK if I take some time to study the lines. That's generally just a page or two," he said. "Once my lines are memorized, I'm just fine. It's simply an eye-to-brain miscommunication. My brain is perfectly normal and my eyes are perfectly normal, it's just whatever transfers the picture to the brain seems to be distorted a bit."

      Both Keegan and Little have performed the roles of Phantom in both of the major musical versions of the legendary story — Andrew Lloyd Webber's global hit and Maury Yeston and Arthur Kopit's "Phantom," which has been performed locally by Rodgers Memorial Theatre and Salt Lake Community College's Grand Theatre. The latter has been popular with regional and dinner theaters across the country.

      "The only similarity (in the two shows) is that you're dealing with one man's struggle with love and passion, knowing that he is being shunned because of his physical disability, but the music is not even close to the same and the whole process of the Phantom earning Christine Daae's love is different.

      "But the Phantom's inner struggle is the same, especially at the end. That's when I feel the inner pain I went through as a child and it tears me apart. I may sound absolutely nuts, but I'm up there on stage feeling sorry for the Phantom, thinking 'I know what this is like. I know the pain you're going through.' It doesn't happen every night, but there are times when it just lands that way. It's devastating, absolutely devastating. I'll come off the stage in tears and nobody will come up to me and I end up being very isolated, just like the character in the show."

      Little is just completing three months of vacation. He requested the time off "so I could get to know my wife again." While he was on the road with "Phantom of the Opera," his wife, Barbara McCulloh, was performing in "The King and I" and she's currently playing Mrs. Darling in the Broadway company of "Peter Pan."

      While the Phantom turns Christine into his "angel of music," Little says his wife is his "angel of books." She helps him learn his roles.

      Little's trip to Salt Lake City is not his first. When he was a student at Redlands High School (he wouldn't divulge how many years ago), his school choir came to Utah as part of a concert swing through Colorado and Arizona.

      At one time, Little considered attending Brigham Young University.
      "My girlfriend at the time was going there," he said. He was aware that BYU had an excellent theater department, but he ended up going elsewhere.

      Little said he probably began his stage career "well beyond my memory."
      His father was professor of theater at the University of Redlands and put him on stage when he was an infant.

      One of his father's former students, Jerry A. Wolf, is now wardrobe supervisor for the "Phantom of the Opera" touring company.
      "He knows me as the son of Paul and Joann Little," he said.

      • DEBUT CD: Little recently released a new CD, "Brad Little Unmasked," showcasing a medley of Broadway and off Broadway hits. For information regarding the recording, call 1-888-320-9123 or check out his Web site at www.bradlittle.com.

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