Playing at the West End's Adelphi theatre and based on the 1990s Oscar nominated film starring Whitney Houston and Kevin Costner, the stage adaptation of The Bodyguard is directed by Thea Sharrock and sees Heather Headley take Houston's role alongside Lloyd Owen, who plays Costner's original part. Although no stranger to musical theatre, adapting such a massive hit for the stage took Richard to audio pastures new.
"When I was approached about The Bodyguard by David Ian and Michael Harrison, the main brief was that the show needed to have filmic qualities and nods to the original movie," says Richard. "But the biggest responsibility for me was having all of those huge hits in the show."
From the filmic angle, Richard's approach was to use more surround soundscapes than he had ever done before.
"It's good fun to do," he says. "It adds a level of dramatic and theatrical dynamic sound-wise. I also have more warmth in the dialogue and have added a more cinematic low end to the system."
"There's a lot going on on stage resulting in a consequently large number of inputs for musicians, radio mics, etc. There are also quite a lot of sound effects and layered sound effects, to add the filmic quality," Richard explains, "It was important to me that we had enough surface area to allow us to always have the entire band up on one layer. This means that Digby [Shaw, Head of Sound], who mixes the show, can mix actively if he needs to."
To cope with this, Richard supplemented the SD7T with a 007 extension to provide additional worksurface area. He also knows that the addition of the application specific T software provides him with all the tricks he needs.
(Jim Evans)
