At the National, DHA's Wyatt Enever and Steve Larkins carried out the careful pre-distortion of the images projected onto the show's cyclorama. The projection - particularly the scrolling image of New York as the ship on which the show is set leaves dock - proved so successful that it was expanded for the West End production.
However, the changes required the DHA team to produce newly pre-distorted images to suit the different shape of cyclorama and projector positions at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane - one of London's largest stages, but here filled with John Gunter's recreation of an Atlantic liner. Gunter's design was adapted from the National by wrapping the cyclorama around three sides of the set. Hersey therefore chose to locate two large-format projectors upstage, giving a back-projected up-centre image that carried around to the sides of the cyclorama as far as possible.
The projectors chosen were E/T/C PIGI 6kW units fitted with film scrollers and with Wybron CXI colour-mixing scrollers to allow the colour of images to be altered on the fly. Both projectors were mounted on a platform installed half-way up the back wall of the stage. The film scrolls contained revised versions of images created for the National (New York by night, New York by day, a sunrise), and new images created for the West End (starscapes, replacing fibre-optic starcloths used at the National, and a new scrolling image of the Isle of Wight.
As well as DHA Lighting's skills with projection, Anything Goes also made use of many of DHA's established and popular products including the DHA Digital Light Curtain (20 units, a combination of six- and eight-lamps, used to light the show's cyclorama), pitching light curtains, and animation disks used to create the effects of reflected water and falling rain.
(Lee Baldock)
