Channelling the sunshine and excess of the original Sin city, Honeymoon In Vegas was adapted by Andrew Bergman from his 1992 hit movie, complete with its original swinging score. The show originally opened over a year before it reached Broadway and has been chased by rave reviews since day one. The New York Times had it tipped from the start, claiming, "...[the show] has wrestled the neon mirage of its title into the solid, satisfying shape of a classic Broadway musica"l.
Lehrer and associate Will Pickens chose the TiMax MADI-64 ports so they could integrate TiMax in a MADI distribution system which receives radio mic receiver signals and feeds amplifiers via Andiamo AES/MADI matrix convertor boxes, and which also provide instant patching and monitoring of any receiver signal at mic handler Lucas Indelicato's busy workstation below stage.
As well as onstage vocal localisation Scott Lehrer and his fellow sound designer Drew Levy were keen to provide properly time- and location-related amplification for the orchestra located deep upstage. To this end three d&b Q1's were placed in structures upstage and two E12's located similarly midstage. FOH engineer Kurt Fisher could ride the levels between main band mix level and upstage level to maintain the right balance and imaging. TiMax Soundhub also allowed them to separate different orchestra elements and feed them into these mixes with slightly varied levels and delay-matrix timings relative to their locations.
Main PA is a combination of d&b C7 for L&R with V8/V12 for centre, Q1 and Q7 delays and fills, then under-balcony and surrounds made up of the ubiquitous combination of E6's, E6's and E0's. Amps are D12's and D6's, the FOH mixing console was Digico SD7T, and all audio equipment was supplied by Sound Associates.
Honeymoon in Vegas is one of two new Broadway shows for which Scott Lehrer has selected TiMax. He explains that previously he and Levy have used another theatre-stalwart generic dsp processor, "which served us well, although it wasn't designed for that purpose. We've been stretching the limits of the device for a while, TiMax works better, especially in terms of the time relationship with the orchestra.
"We broke the orchestra down to left, center, and right locations, and also strings, reeds, brass, piano, rhythm, and drums, and send separate inputs from each of them to TiMax, and then specific amounts of each, as needed, to the speakers on stage. We were able to set different balances of each group of instruments by location, and could set the time and level of each group."
(Jim Evans)
