This Brady isn’t often on the sidelines either: Veteran actress in SLOC’s ‘A Little Night Music’

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It’s true, Pat Brady may be getting a bit older, but no one could ever accuse her of slowing down.

“I’m proud that at my age, I still love the theater and can play a big part in it,” said Brady, who will maintain her busy schedule this month with a performance in the Schenectady Light Opera Company production of Stephen Sondheim’s “A Little Night Music,” opening Friday and running through Jan. 29.

“There are still parts for women my age, and they are roles that I love,” she said. “I’ve had four in a row now since the [Covid-19] pandemic.”

After performing in Schenectady Civic’s “Other Desert Cities” in March of 2018, Brady was idle for a while due to the pandemic before resuming her activities in November of 2021 in “Over the River and Through the Woods” at Curtain Call Theatre in Latham. In June of 2022 she performed in “Ripcord,” also at Curtain Call, and then in November of this past year she was back in the fold of the Schenectady Civic Players in “Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express.”

In playing the part of Madame Armfeldt in “A Little Night Music,” Brady is back in a Sondheim musical for the fourth time in her career. Her other Sondheim musicals are “Follies,” “Company” and “Side by Side by Sondheim.”

“For those of us who do musical theater, we don’t walk to an audition for Sondheim,” she said. “We run. Once you’ve done a Sondheim musical, you’re hooked. The music is complex, sophisticated, and a real pleasure to perform.”

The signature song from “A Little Night Music” is “Send in the Clowns,” which will be sung by Lindsey Dodd, who plays Desiree Armfeldt.

“I know I’m too old to play that part, but I still used it for my audition,” said Brady. “I have done it twice on the stage before but it was a while ago. I love the song. Sondheim isn’t Rodgers and Hammerstein, but he writes sophisticated melodies that you still can whistle to yourself as you walk out the theater. The melodies are always swirling through my head. I love them and I hope the audience feels the same way.”

The popular New York Times critic Clive Barnes loved the show and the music when it opened on Broadway in 1973.

“The real triumph belongs to Stephen Sondheim,” wrote Barnes in his review. “The music is a celebration of three-quarter time, an orgy of plaintively memorable waltzes, all talking of past loves and lost worlds.” The lyrics, he added, are “breathtaking.”

The musical director for the SLOC production of “A Little Night Music” is Robert Soricelli, who also oversaw the music in SLOC’s production of “The Glorious Ones” in November of 2021. Ashley and Spencer Lee are the choreographers, Amy Clark and Haley Van Alstyne the producers and JJ Paul the stage manager.

Sharing the stage with Brady and Dodd are Shawn Olander-Hahn as Fredrik Egerman and Emma O’Kane as Fredrika Armfeldt. Brady plays the mother of Dodd in the show, and O’Kane is the granddaughter. Brian Clemente is directing.

“A Little Night Music” was first produced on Broadway in 1973, and is based on the 1955 Ingmar Bergman film of the same name. The play was nominated for 11 Tony Awards and won six, including Best Musical.

“It’s about relationships and the difficulties, the complexities and the temptations that come with relationships,” said Brady. “I play the courtesan, which means my character was a high-falutin prostitute in Europe with connections to royalty. Now she is wealthy and lives in a beautiful home with lots of servants, but she is dealing with relationships, in particular her daughter and granddaughter.”

Brady is in her 18th show with SLOC, but the first one since the troupe moved from its State Street location to the old St. John The Baptist Church in the downtown section of the city.

“Our director, Brian Clemente, did a great job with the stage and the set, and I’m also singing with a six-piece orchestra, which I’ve never done before,” said Brady, whose one solo in the show is “Liaisons.” “I have never performed with such a beautiful orchestra like that before.”

Brady, whose resume also includes 24 shows at Schenectady Civic — the first in 1990 when she moved to the Schenectady area — grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio. She has long had a love for music due to the influence of her father, Andrew J. Brady.

“My father was an educator who loved music,” remembered Brady. “He did arranging, and he worked with gifted kids from all over. He was well loved in my hometown.”

He was so admired, in fact, that the city of Cincinnati built a music theater — 5,000 seats indoors and a total of 8,000 in the entire outdoor venue — that opened in July of 2021 in his name. It is called the Andrew J. Brady Music Center and it is located on the banks of the Ohio River between Paycor Stadium, where the Cincinnati Bengals play, and Riverfront Stadium, home to the Cincinnati Reds.

“Cincinnati is very supportive of the arts, but they needed $27million to build a new music venue, and it was two former students of my father’s who anonymously donated the money and asked that it be named after him,” said Brady. “My family went out to see it last year and we went to a Bonnie Raitt concert. They said it has the best acoustics in the world, so it was quite exquisite, and made me feel very proud.”

‘A Little Night Music’

WHERE: Schenectady Light Opera Company, 427 Franklin St., Schenectady
WHEN: Opens Friday, runs through Jan. 29; performances at 8 p.m. Thursday through Saturday, and 2 p.m. Sunday
HOW MUCH: $32-$25
MORE INFO: Call (518) 730-7370 or visit tickets.sloctheater.org

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