Emily Dobbs brings together director Adam Penford, lighting designer James Whiteside, set designer Richard Kent and Found111's regular composer and sound designer Edward Lewis; who between them set the framework within which the cast will perform for seventy tense and periodically explosive minutes. Niamh Cusack and Sean Campion play the older of two couples alongside Matthew Lewis and Ruta Gedmintas.
James Whiteside explained his approach to lighting Unfaithful. "The first thing I did was read the play. I've lit an Owen McCafferty play before, so I knew his style of writing and what to expect. McCafferty uses a very naturalistic dialogue - unpolished, almost poetic with very little punctuation. Once I was familiar with the play, I met with Adam (director) and Richard (set designer) and we discussed ideas. The story and space made it very clear that both the lighting and set would need to be simple and uncomplicated.
The concept of using banks of light, focused straight, became of great interest because it was one of only a few practical options. Richard worked my idea for lighting into the model of his set to see how it would feel; from what we learnt by doing that, we adjusted the size of the ceiling space to fit the lights in around it. Doing this during pre-production, on a model, was beneficial over making the decision once we'd actually built the set, which would have cost us a lot more money and time."
Lighting a play in the intimate confines of Found111 is no easy task, as James explained: "It's important that in a space like Found111 the lights are integral to the design. The lighting is always visible, there is no way of hiding it so it has to be part of the overall environment.
"A line of tightly spaced birdies down each side, and a similar line of ETC Source 4 pars at either end washed the stage with four even walls of light. At the far end of the room, set back from the stage were a row of six GLP Volkslicht LED wash lights which I chose for their rich, saturated colours, needed for the scene changes.
"Myself and production electrician Adam Squire, selected the lighting fixtures not only because of the effect they produce, but also due to their low power consumption. In Found111 we only have two phases of a 32A/3 power supply for lighting. I have a debt of gratitude to Adam for doing a superb job on Unfaithful, not least for balancing the power perfectly across the two phases, whilst still making sure we had enough power to run all the lights."
James went on to explain that he was using thirty-six ways of dimming via a Pulsar Rack Pak dimmer and his console of choice was an ETC Ion, programmed on site by James, and operated during the show by deputy stage manager Tamsin Withers. James commented, "It's quite common on smaller theatre productions for the lighting to be operated by a DSM, I programmed with this in mind, so activating each scene is very simple and follows a numerical cue list."
Account Manager John Pauls, handled the project for PRG XL Video and described the show as "powerful theatre that certainly didn't pull any punches". He added, the limited space is a challenge for all involved, the actors, the designers and it's up to us to come up with workable solutions. Working with Emily Dobbs means we know that we will be working on a critically acclaimed show."
(Jim Evans)
