The tour - production managed by Nigel Mousley with lighting designed by Mark Cunniffe - visited UK arenas over the holidays, with a star-studded cast including The Tweenies, Postman Pat, Bob the Builder, Fireman Sam and many more. The tour included three shows daily, enthralling thousands of children and parents alike in a block-busting, action-packed highly visual performance.
Bandit UK's chief executive, Lester Cobrin, comments: "This is a fantastic song and dance show for the whole family to enjoy, especially over the holidays. The show is a highly innovative live stage production and I am extremely proud and privileged to be involved with such a dynamic team of people."
Bandit's crew for the tour included Nigel Julian as crew chief and Ewan Cameron, who also operated the show using a Jands Vista console. They were joined by technicians Tom Crosbie and Ricky 'Avo' Butler.
The production loaded into Bray Studios, near London for four days of technical rehearsals before hitting the road. The show consisted of plenty of big, bold, bright looks and lots of colour and movement to keep pace with the rapacious rhythm of the performance, designed to address even the shortest of attention spans, and keep a mass of excited children entertained for the duration.
In terms of equipment, the above-stage space was dominated by two medium duty circular trusses. The 5m diameter circular truss was trimmed 2m above the 14m diameter circle and hung in between these were 24 strings of festoons which took a highly effective canopy look and brought a carnivalesque ambience to the stage.
Lighting fixtures rigged onto the circle trusses were 24 bars of 4 PARs, 24 PAR truss toners, 12 Martin MAC 2K Profiles and 12 MAC 2K Washes, along with 15 DWE 4-lites for audience illumination. There were also 16 ACL Beacons for the PC Plum sketch, and a 48" mirrorball, which dropped in for the 'Twinkle Twinkle Little Star' scene. This regularly received one of the biggest "ooohs" of the show!
Twenty-four JTE PixelPAR 90s were mounted in the set along with two GS300 low smoke machines.
Above the stage in the upstage area - effectively in the rear truss position - was a 12m diameter semi-circular truss, rigged with another six MAC 2K profiles and seven High End StudioBeam PCs.
All these trusses were sub-hung from a mother grid above, which also housed the Tweenies space-ship (which descended for their dramatic stage entrance). This set piece also contained lighting in the form of 20 ACL 4-lites, plus two ZR33 smoke machines and fans.On the floor were another eight MAC 2K profiles and another six StudioBeam PCs, and the back and sides of the space were wrapped by the 120ft wide LED starcloth.Bandit additionally supplied four Lycian 2kw follow spots, positioned at the front and to the sides of FOH.
(Lee Baldock)
