The evening was a one off to introduce his new album Swing Both Ways, which was released a week later.
Nick Edwards, managing director of Aurora said, "Lighting director Oli Richards approached Aurora early on with an interesting concept. Oli had the vision of creating a staggered celling sculpture out of Martin Mac Aura's. The Auras were required to be rigged on individual scaff drops to make 'sleek' 'smart' vertical drops."
He continued, "Aurora worked closely with rigging experts Actus Industries to develop these bespoke custom pipes. Richards rig also featured Martin MAC Vipers, and Clay Paky Sharpies. Aurora were also able to provide some new retro tungsten lights including vintage Mole Richardson Two Lights and the new James Thomas Patt 2013s."
Oli's team included moving light operators Theo Cox and Alex Pocock, vision supervisor Daryl Bidewell, lighting gaffer Seb Williams and head rigger Stephen 'Nipper' Fitch.
Aurora regular Seb Williams was brought into to become a conduit between departments. Seb explains the challenges he faced "Trying to squeeze all the production elements onto the Palladium stage was quite an effort. The back of the set ran further upstage than the fly bars so we had used every available inch of space. In addition all the Stage Left wing space was take up with the crane to fly Robbie over the audience, the Miss Piggy Love seat truck, a wardrobe covered in glitter and several lighting stands. Sound and lighting had to share the stage right wing space with another wardrobe.
"For the lighting system we used 13 of the house fly bars, seven of which were used to suspend MAC Auras on Aurora's custom made scaff drop arms with TV Spiggot attachment on the end. These tubes result in no visible rigging between the tube and the fixture.
"We worked closely with Stufish to integrate the lighting rig with the set. We drew up the lighting plan in AutoCAD and imported the set to ensure all the different flown elements worked together. We had to revisit this several times as set pieces were introduced and this close working relationship ensured there were no major problems on site."
He concludes, "The rigging challenge was the short load in time for lighting. Over 140 moving heads and strobes had to be rigged, powered and tested from the console in seven hours to leave a clear stage for the set to come in. The nature of the event meant all the equipment over stage was flown from the house fly bars with offstage lamps suspended from trusses installed by Aurora. The custom made Aurora drop arms all needed to be installed in perfect straight lines, this task was made trickier by the final seven fly bars in the venue only coming in to 17' off the floor. All was complete with only seconds to spare leaving the stage ready for the set and the rig ready for Theo Cox to start programming. From that we were able to turn our attention to the 50 plus fixtures in the auditorium."
(Jim Evans)
