"Southwark Playhouse is a very complicated venue with a lot of acoustic challenges, so we've tried to keep the sound system as simple as possible, whilst still dealing with the demands and complexities of the show," says Johnson.
"We're running separate band and vocal systems and the desk is dealing with all the processing and EQ for all outputs. This means that we're not only using the desk to EQ the system, but to time it as well. A lot of people would use external processing for that, but we're really taking advantage of the power of the console and, because we have the ability to set delay time within the groups and matrix outputs, it gives us a lot of flexibility."
Southwark Playhouse is located in a railway arch directly beneath the lines coming in to and out of the extremely busy London Bridge station. The space is incredibly reflective and the challenges are multiplied because of the noise of trains running overhead.
"To cope with that, we've recorded the trains and introduced them into the show," says sound operator David Sharrock. "People can't tell the difference between recorded and live and the cast naturally talks slightly louder at those points to overcome the extra noise."
"Because of the challenges of the venue, we used a central mono source for the band, which is located in a separate room," adds Johnson. "We have audio coming from the band and from the cast, who are effectively underneath the speaker system in the auditorium."
(Jim Evans)
