The show opened at the Theatre Royal Plymouth in November 2016 to excellent reviews, with shows at the Bord Gais Energy Theatre Dublin running across December and into New Year 2017. The production is directed and choreographed by Morgan Young.
Having worked with the team on a highly successful production of Elf The Musical in 2015, PRG XL Video's theatre account director, Peter Marshall was contacted by Michael Rose to provide lighting and video technology for the new production of Big The Musical.
Preparing for the new show, production manager, Hugh Borthwick visited PRG XL Video's facility at Longbridge, Birmingham. He explains: "Simon Higlett had designed an amazing set with some great technical challenges, so it was great to work with PRG to realise his design."
The design of the show included a wide, double-sided, curved video wall which was used as digital scenery. Mounted on to a revolve built by TR2, the video screen was a complex construction which required planning and preparation. Hugh Borthwick continues: "We had a few demonstrations at Longbridge with the designers and director present. The Theatre Royal Plymouth's TR2 expert practitioners Sebastian Soper and Jason Steen worked with Paul Craven, Sam Floyd, Ted Moore and Howard Eaton to create the set and ensure all the elements could work together. Total Solutions were a huge help in its assembly.
"The main challenges were how to construct the video wall with the LED panels working on both sides of the curve; how to make it travel on the middle revolve; plus, how to power it and send data to it. Once we had solutions for those questions, we also had to allow the scenic elements to fit on or around the revolve to complete the design."
Video designer, Ian William Galloway explains how the screen was designed. "The scenes in the show change very quickly without a lot of time to do a conventional scene change. Simon Higlett and I wanted to find a way in which we could quickly change scene, but also quickly block off large areas of the stage so it could be reset for scenes coming up. That led to the idea of a series of revolves and a revolving video wall in the middle of these."
The screen was built in sections with each facet each containing 16 panels of ROE Visual MC-7 LED. Ian explains how these were used: "The screen wall is semi-circular, mounted on a ring revolve, with another ring revolve outside this, and a centre revolve inside. The set-up is the same on the inside and the outside of the semi-circle. This allows us to revolve downstage, and block off the centre revolve so that another scene can be built upstage while the action happens downstage."
PRG XL Video's account director Stefaan Michels, and project director LED, James Morden, worked closely with Ian William Galloway to find solutions and get the huge multi-section screen working as needed.
The lighting design for Big The Musical was created by Olivier Award winner Tim Lutkin who comments: "The two main parts of the design were the lighting rig, which needed to big, bright and punchy. For a musical theatre show, I need the rig to be able to create lots of different looks, but in Big there are also play-style scenes which need a subtle approach so the sidelights are also important.
For Big I used a lot LED fixtures; MAC Vipers which were fantastic and we had two rows of Claypaky Sharpy washes. The reason for the two wash sections was working around the revolving LED screen. There was a set used when the concave rear screen section was in use, and another for when the convex front screen section appeared.
"We used eight GLP Impression X4 fixtures for the side lights, used during the office and street scenes. All the other lighting was overhead."
(Jim Evans)
