Over the weekend of May 26, Sadie Laflamme-Snow put her Hallmark work on pause to go back to her home base, Toronto, and her first love, the stage. She appeared in the Royal Conservatory of Music's concert production of Stephen Sondheim's "A Little Night Music," starring opposite Eric McCormack of "Will & Grace" fame. This was no TV-star vanity project, however. Laflamme-Snow is a classically trained actor and singer and a graduate of the National Theatre School of Canada, so she's quite at home on the boards.
Still, it was an ambitious undertaking. Any theater lover will tell you that Sondheim's shows are among the most difficult to perform. His music and lyrics are complex, and his work often explores complicated characters and situations (as in "Assassins" and "Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street"). That's what appealed to Laflamme-Snow when she joined the cast. "[T]here's something about a lot of Sondheim's work and its ability to touch on the profound or the darkness in the world without being too in your face," she told The Toronto Star. "And what I think audiences are craving are these profound themes about humanity and people and society."
"A Little Night Music" is one of Sondheim's lighter works. Based on a film by Ingmar Bergman, the musical follows several sets of Swedish couples who re-evaluate their love lives during a country weekend. Laflamme-Snow played Anne Egerman, a young bride who can't bring herself to lose her virginity to her much older husband.
