Produced by Bill Kenwright and The Really Useful Theatre Company, directed by Matthew Warchus and designed by Rob Howell, this latest production has been expanded to an evening’s entertainment and features five brand new songs.
Serviced by London-based Orbital Sound, the production features the company’s fifth Yamaha PM1D digital mixing console, which was purchased from dealer Marquee Audio. With three of Orbital’s other PM1Ds specified for other West End musicals - Bombay Dreams, Our House and Joseph - the Yamaha desk has certainly made its mark in top-flight theatre.
"Large format digital desks are now very established," says Orbital MD Chris Headlam. "In the three years since we started using them they have become the de facto standard - a top West End theatre tool - and Marquee Audio helped us make it happen. It’s bread and butter stuff to us now, and no longer feels like we’re sticking our necks out."
Having previously specified a PM1D, running v1.5 software on Bombay Dreams and subsequently on Saturday Night Fever, sound designer Mick Potter had little hesitation in placing it on the revival of Tell Me On A Sunday. At the Gielgud, the system includes a CS1D Control Surface running two DSP1D processing engines in mirror mode for the one-woman show. Denise Van Outen wears two Sennheiser 5012 radio mic transmitters, and is backed by a five-piece band. Potter specified a Meyer CP2 system on the proscenium, with d&b E0s for under balcony fills, while the comprehensive surround sound system also comprised 48 EV S40 loudspeakers, all from Orbital.
Lighting designer Hugh Vanstone, working with associate lighting designer David Holmes, specified a moving light rig supplied by VLPS Lighting Services through project manager John McEvoy, who tells us Vanstone was particularly keen to use Vari*Lites on this production.
The rig included 15 VL5s, 11 VL5Bs, 8 VL6Cs and a pair of VL1000 Tungstens, while conventionals were largely ETC - 78 Source Fours (two of which Vanstone used with Rosco’s ImagePro projectors) and 52 Source Four Pars, along with 14 Altman battens and followspots from Lycian and Robert Juliat. Control was via a Strand 530i console, with Avolites’ ART 2000 dimming.
VLPS also looked after the production’s rigging requirements, which included two custom truss circles to Vanstone’s specification, built for VLPS by Tomcat UK. Production crew included crew chief Chris Cunningham and assistant Ellen Conolly, plus programmer Steve ‘Spooky’ Parkinson.
The video system, which is used to great effect throughout the show to identify not only the changing locations but also the seasons of the year, was supplied by Blitz Vision.
Blitz Vision’s Mark Walker oversaw the provision of the high resolution video projection and video/graphics replay system. For the centre 10m screen, a Digital Projection DMD projector was used, producing a 5000 lumen output, running at 1024 x 768 resolution. For the two side screens, Blitz provided Sanyo LCD projectors with 4000 lumen output, also running at 1024 x 768 resolution.
Blitz Vision supplied and rigged the projection and Blitz Graphics used a Dataton Watchout three-screen system outputting three images (at 1024 x 768 resolution). This was mainly running sequences of still images, and a VT for the final scene.
In total, Blitz Graphics keystone corrected and programmed more than 260 images for the production, as well as the VT section, using Adobe Photoshop and Premiere.
Lee Baldock
