Brad Little, who will be playing the title role in a national touring company production of "Phantom of the Opera" in San Diego, will perform in Redlands at a casual reception on Monday, Nov.8, for Redlands Symphony season ticket holders.  He will be joined by Diane Jennings, a 1976 University of Redlands alumna who was Carlotta in the San Diego production.  The duo will be accompanied by Ladd Thomas.  Donors of $1,000 or more will also be invited to this event.

Brad Little is a graduate of Redlands High School, where he played leading roles in "South Pacific" and "Hello Dolly." He started playing the 'Phantom' in the touring company of "Phantom of the Opera" after starring in the same play on Broadway in the role of Raoul.  He has performed in numerous musicals, including "Fiddler on the Roof" with Topol, and "Anything Goes" performing the lead opposite Leslie Uggams. Other roles include Che in "Evita," Thomas Jefferson in "1776," Tony in "West Side Story" and Jesus in the European tour of "Jesus Christ Superstar."

Jennings' distinguished career as a lyric soprano has included roles such as Pamina in "The Magic Flute, " Mimi in "La Boheme" and Micaela in "Carmen."  She has been a member of the Salzburg Landtheater. She is a former member of University Choir and Chapel Singers at the University of Redlands.

Ladd Thomas is chair of the organ department for the University  of Southern California School of Music.  He is the former president of the American Guild of Organists and international performing artist.

Season tickets for the five symphony subscription concerts cost $60, $100, $125 and $160.  To order tickets, phone the Redlands Symphony office at 335-5202; e-mail redsymp@uor.edu; or fax request to 335-5213.  Checks, Visa, MasterCard, Discover and American Express are accepted.
 
 
 
 

 Brad Little is a phantom.

His wife, Barbara McCulloh, hardly ever sees him.

 His parents, Jo and Paul Little of Redlands, see him two or three times
a year, if they're lucky.

And yet millions have watched him sing and act on stage. Most, however,
have not seen his face.

He is the Phantom.

Six days a week, nearly every week of the year for the past three years,
Little has played the lead role in the Broadway production of Andrew
Lloyd
Webber's "Phantom of the Opera" -- the traveling Broadway production.

Every six weeks, he is in another city.
On Thursday, Little comes to San Diego. It's as close to the Inland
Empire
as the touring company will get and friends and family are making plans
 to join theater-goers at the Civic Theatre and catch a glimpse of the
elusive
actor.

Nearly two decades have passed since Little left Redlands for New York.
But the time has passed quickly, he says.

"It just seems like yesterday I was playing Charles Dalrymple in
'Brigadoon'
there at the Redlands Bowl," says Little, talking by phone from his
dressing
room in Green Bay, Wis. Paul Little, Brad's father, directed the theater
department at the University of Redlands for 17 years and continues to
direct bowl musicals there to this day.

 "My father was the one who really turned me on to theater," Little says.
 "My mother was the one who turned me on to music. Put them together and
 you get a theater performer."

 Even though Little started young -- his parents incorporated him into the
 plays in which they both participated rather than have a baby-sitter
watch
 him -- it wasn't until he joined the Redlands High School choir that he
 blossomed into a performer.

"That's where my career really began in music," he says. Roger Duffer,
 Little's high school choir director, now choral director at Riverside
Community
 College, remembers seeing great potential in Little.

 "There's a lot of talented people out there," Duffer says. "The key is
 whether they have the drive to go on and do it. Brad had the advantage
 of coming from a drama family. He understood the hard work that it took."

 Little's struggles began well before he decided on a life in theater.

 "He's dyslexic," says his mother, Jo.

 He had difficulty in school. He never learned to read well. And although
 Jo tried to teach him piano -- she taught professionally -- Brad could
 never read the notes quickly enough. His parents took him to specialists.
 But it wasn't until he was a freshman in high school that they put a name
 to Brad's disorder.

 "Bruce Jenner (the Olympic decathlete) was being interviewed on 'Donohue'
 and was talking about dyslexia," Jo recalls. "Brad said, 'That's it!
That's
 what I've got.' "

 A special program in high school helped him to excel in a hands-on
learning
 environment. But because of his dyslexia, Jo says, "College wasn't really
 for him."

 But singing apparently was.

After graduating from high school in 1982, Little won a scholarship to
 a camp program in Texas for singers, sponsored by stage singer/actress
Mary Martin. Little traveled to New York for a benefit concert in honor
of Martin and tried out for a role in "They're Playing Our Song," in
Downigtown,
Pa.

 "A bunch of us decided to go audition for a show, just for the hell of
 it," he says. "And yours truly got the job."

 "I was just in the chorus," he says. But it was a start.

One day, cast members from the play went to a New York audition. Again,
 Little was chosen. Gradually he was given larger roles in smaller
theaters,
or small roles in larger theaters.

Roles in such productions as "Cyrano the Musical," "Jesus Christ
Superstar"
and "West Side Story" followed before Little took on the role of Raoul
in the Broadway production of "Phantom." From there, he was tapped for
the lead role in the traveling company. He balked a little.

"You're talking almost three times the paycheck of what I was making,"
 he says, comparing his pay as the star of the road company to his
Broadway
 role, "and I was thinking of turning it down. It's a lot more difficult
 (on the road), but I just couldn't turn a role like this down."

The Phantom has been called one of the musical stage's best roles ever.
 It's also, according to Duffer, "one of the most demanding roles in the
 realm of things."

 To do it night after night is taxing, Little says.

"There have been a few shows where I have been so exhausted, I really
have
a hard time getting through and literally, I can hardly walk at the end,"
he says. "I feel horrible that an audience had to sit through it. And
yet,
they still get on their feet at the end."

Little says he tries to bring a bit of humanity to the role of the demon
who lives beneath the opera house.

"There are times when he needs to be this monster character, but I wanted
 him to have some human aspects so that when he goes into these tirades,
you still have a bit of a connection with him," he says. "With this
character,
 you can have it all."

Duffer says his former student holds his own against Davis Gaines and
Michael
Crawford, who Duffer has also seen in "Phantom."

"I can't imagine the role being done any better than he does it," Duffer
 says of Little.

"There's kind of a ballet to Brad's movement and the blocking he does.
 It's hard to describe, but he kind of glides and moves around the stage
 very differently. There's an otherworldly feel to what he does."

The road life is taking its toll, however, and Little says he plans to
leave "Phantom" soon.

"The toughest thing is being away from my wife," he says of touring. "I
will probably be leaving at the beginning of next year to go be
unemployed
and be with my wife."

He's not sure how much time he will take off. But he says he is toying
with the idea of coming back to Redlands for a brief stint.

"My dad and I have been talking about possibly collaborating and doing
a bowl production," he says. "I might come out and direct a piece, which
would be a lot of fun."

And maybe a lot less work.
 

Nearly three years into his "Phantom of the Opera" tour Brad Little has few illusions about his star turn.

"This role is really actor-proof," the congenial Redlands native says from Green Bay, Wis., where he's wrapping up a five-week run of the pop hit.

"The general public is going to love it no matter who is playing it. (Fellow) performers or critics are harder to win over. The role is as famous a name as Michael Jackson. . . . I know the fans are going to come up to me and say I'm the best phantom they've ever seen, and generally I realize that it's because I'm the last phantom they've seen."

Little has been associated with the Andrew Lloyd Webber-penned, Cameron Mackintosh-produced show for six years, since he first played Raoul on Broadway. On the road, he's had plenty of time to ponder the show's phenomenal popularity:

"I don't think we've come up with the answer to why the show is so successful. People keep coming back. They see something different or think they see something different every time. It's actually written as an outline. People fill in all these other things from their own experience."

Musical theater legend Hal Prince even directed it that way. "Keep it black and white," he told Little. "Let the audience fill in the colors."

When first here in 1995, "Phantom" grossed $8.1 million, or 90 percent of the 3,000-seat Civic Theatre's capacity for seven weeks. Not to mention five years in Los Angeles and nearly 5,000 performances (just shy of 12 years) on Broadway, where it's still taking in $700,000 a week at the Majestic Theatre.

The four-week San Diego run, which opens tonight, has proved just as hot at the box office, selling $2.7 million initially and another $92,000 in one day, when added performances went on sale.

Playwright Albert Innaurato spoke for many serious theater people when he wrote recently that when the famous chandelier falls, people go home happy, "minus a hundred shekels and 10,000 brain cells." But "phans" still outnumber skeptics, as Little has learned.

Little remembers times when he's felt ill and wondered why he went to work, because his voice was affected. "I didn't have a voice and shouldn't have been there. But it was as if Michael Jackson, Liberace and all these guys came out at once. It's so bizarre, I don't think there's a role like this. At times it's disappointing. I would actually accept it if the audience booed; a few days I felt I deserved that. Yet they still jump up on their feet and cheer."

Little's speaking voice is deep and resonant -- a radio announcer's baritone, not a warbling romantic's tenor. "I don't know a lot of phantoms that have a baritone voice," he says.

"Most of the time they hire tenors, but God gifted me with a G-sharp (over high C), so the nice thing is I can make a more sinister phantom. 'Music of the Night' starts very low. The G-flat is reaching the top of my range, unlike tenors who can go up to the stratosphere. But that leads to some excitement even for me. Will I make it?"

The vocal challenge helps keep the show fresh, he says. And there's another perk his longevity in the role has earned him: Little gets a three-day break in the middle of each tour stop to visit his wife, actress Barbara McCulloh. She just completed the Broadway run of "Peter Pan" and now is playing Elvira in "Blithe Spirit" outside New York.

"We knew we were both marrying into this business 12 years ago," Little says. "I said I would continue with 'Phantom' as long as I could keep my marriage fresh, so I worked" -- he pauses to bracket the term -- "a conjugal-visit clause into my contract."