It’s quite difficult to know where to start talking about this production.
The folly of trying to turn a 2000-plus-seat concert hall into a proscenium arch theatre?
The folly of putting a play of little action into such a barn?
The folly of trying to mount a show of this size over Christmas/New Year and therefore during the Festival and all the other seasonal hoop-la that also needs gear and crews?
The folly of having to completely light and tech the show off-site?
As you can see – it’s an embarrassment of riches! Or given the time of year, someone did christen it the gift that keeps on giving …
But do it we somehow did and now it’s on and people seem to like it.
The show was lit and teched for a week in Bay 17 at Carriageworks. Not that this space is big enough to accommodate a show that fills the entire Concert Hall platform, forestage and all, but simply because it was the biggest venue that could be found and afforded. So a fair bit of time was spent equating lighting positions that in reality would be significantly further from the stage and also ‘guesstimating’ light levels that would still work in a room that’s vastly bigger. An interesting exercise in itself!
Then there was the equipment factor. To mix my animal metaphors, this is THE elephant in the room that producers are playing ostrich about. There simply isn’t enough rental equipment available to service the number of commercial shows being produced at the moment. If people don’t get their heads out of the sand about this situation, then sooner or later, shows will start to get cancelled – or lit with torches. In this climate, substitutions aren’t the exception – they become the only way in which you can realistically cobble together a rig, only to then spend twice as long working with inadequate or inappropriate gear that was never made to work together or in this particular context. It’ll be interesting to see how long it takes for audience fatigue to kick in and for shows to get pulled due to lack of interest.
Ergo, the show was supplied by four (or possibly even five) rental companies. Now there’s a recipe for blowing your budget! Chameleon came to the party at the last minute and together with Novatech supplied most of the gear and rigging, with the balance mostly coming from PRG and ResX. Rob Cuddon (generously doubling as Prod Lx) and Rachael Ewins spent months with a spreadsheet of options including a particularly ominous column showing just how late some of the gear would be arriving.
The other great dearth that we’re all well aware of is the skilled crew. Not long ago, I was still repeating the line that all the good people went to film and TV during the lockdown and I’m certainly personally aware of several examples. The fact that our subsidised companies didn’t do more to support even the most regular of casuals, is morally scandalous and we’re now experiencing the result. But in the face of the now truly massive lack of good people, I can no longer believe that that’s where they all went. Surely they can’t all be earning triple the dollars doing Masterchef?
In the case of Amadeus, I was blessed in this respect. With the likes of Rob Cuddon, Rachael Ewins, Mike MacDonald, Callum Adams and a variety of starry guest casual appearances, I was alright Jack! But this remains a key issue for our industry to address. We’ve never been particularly good at training the next generation and that’s also now coming back to bite us. As this process will perforce take a few years, we need to start doing something about it pronto, or this problem will drag on for ages.
Setting these problems (and my soapbox) aside, my principal challenge was to achieve some sort of intimacy and contact with the audience. The back rows of the Concert Hall are a very long way away for a play. Added to this, for the set designed by my lifelong partner in crime Michael Scott-Mitchell, we selected an extremely lively and highly reflective perforated mesh, which looks fantastic but constantly needs to be kept in check lest it draws the eye away from the performers. So lots of actor-lighting-technique and a 100% tungsten FOH rig are required. The latter is very sparse – but very hard-working for it. There are seven ETC Source4 Revolutions on a FOH Truss and 16 conventional Source4s per side in improvised Box Boom positions. Making these positions happen was just one example of the difficulties of inserting a theatre into a heritage-listed Concert Hall. Months of bureaucracy!
One of the other obstacles was the need to install a mother grid before we could hang any of the six portals that comprise the set, or the five overhead trusses and the six pairs of booms that all hang from it.
The overhead rig is wholly moving lights, as there’s no way of focussing anything above the entirely stepped floor, which also incorporates a pair of five-metre diameter revolves. Martin MAC Encore CLDs do all the front light and the backlight is a mix of MAC Viper Performances and MAC Viper DXF Washes, with a handful of MAC Quantum Washes and GLP Impressions bringing up the rear, at which point the perspective set is only about three metres above the show deck.
Onstage, the high side from the tops of the booms is all ETC Lustr 2s and all the low cross light is provided by conventional ETC Source 4’s. The only flown item in the show, a large wall comprised of four pairs of tracking panels, is lit by 12.5 metres of GLP X4 Bars, which fly on the same truss as the wall. Right upstage, the black RP screen is backlit by four Prolight ECL Panels and the box truss that supports the portals is internally lit by 36 GLP X4 Atoms. A couple of Unique Hazers make fleeting guest appearances. Thanks to the aforementioned scarcity of gear, the show was made on an MA2 console, which I still consider to be an extremely theatre-unfriendly desk. I thank both Rob and Mike for bending it into shape to serve these purposes!
Finally, there is only one variety of set electrics. Each of the portals is edged downstage and upstage on all three sides, (some 250 metres worth) with a custom LED tape supplied by Lightopia. This has Warm White, Cool White and Dark Blue LEDs, all to my specification and disappears beautifully behind my favourite backlight-able black acrylic. The two revolves are also outlined by double rings of the same.
Was it worth the grief? Ask me in about a year!
Photos: Daniel Boud
