White Light first supplied the EvenLED to the British tour of the show in 2008. It was specified because it solved the problem of the lack of space in many of the venues the tour visited, which left no room to achieve the complex cyclorama and cloth lighting the show demanded using traditional techniques.
Instead, the show's design team built a 13m by 8m wall of EvenLED panels upstage of the skycloth. Each EvenLED panel features a four-by-four grid of three colour LEDs, each of which can be individually controlled, and which together will evenly backlight a cloth or screen positioned as little as 25cm away from the EvenLED.
Controlled using the pixelmapper function of the MA grandMA console, cloths could be lit using single colours or rainbows, graphical patterns, animations, and with dissolving or wiping transitions. At the same time, the EvenLED uses dramatically less power than would have been required by a traditional cyc lighting solution.
Since its appearance on Mary Poppins, EvenLED has appeared on many other shows, including the hit musicals Oliver! and Love Never Dies, both currently running in London. Chameleon Touring Systems, the show's supplier in Australia, have sub-hired the very same EvenLED system first used on the UK tour.
Mary Poppins, produced by Disney Theatrical and Cameron Mackintosh, directed by Richard Eyre, co-directed and choreographed by Matthew Bourne, co-choreographed by Stephen Mear, designed by Bob Crowley with lighting by Howard Harrison, is currently playing at Her Majesty's Theatre in Melbourne.
(Jim Evans)
