The four plays were, in order of production, Terrence Rattigan's Flare Path, Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz And Guildenstern Are Dead, The Tempest and finally The Lion in Winter by James Goldman.
Designing an audio system that could comfortably accommodate a Second World War love triangle, an absurdist comedy, Shakespeare and a 12th century Christmas drama was a challenge, especially as the requirement for radio mics ranged from zero to 24.
"Based on my time working at the National Theatre, I designed an average 'rep-like' system for music, effects and so on, which had different components added to it, depending on the requirements of each production," says Groothuis.
Supplied by Autograph Sound, this system comprised a Yamaha DME64N for loudspeaker management, routing audio to a house system of Meyer, JBL and d&b loudspeakers. Not needing any radio microphones, the rest of the system for Flare Path comprised a Yamaha DM1000VCM console on stage for effects. The console was fitted with an MY16-AT ADAT interface card, to accommodate 16 channels of music on Q Lab, running on a pair of Macintosh computers.
In contrast, Rosencrantz And Guildenstern Are Dead was a more complex production, with 24 channels of Sennheiser radio mics. For this, Groothuis brought in a Yamaha PM5D mixing console, located at the conventional front of house position. This setup was retained for The Tempest, which featured a lot of music and added backing tracks to the mix. Finally, for The Lion In Winter, Groothuis reverted to the sameDM1000VCM setup used on Flare Path.
"Two of the most important things are the reliability of the system and taking up as few seats as possible," says Groothuis. "Flare Path and The Lion In Winter didn't need radio mics on the actors, there was a fair amount of music but no live singing. So we could do the show with the console on stage. The setup for the other two productions was necessarily more complex and needed an FOH mix position, so the PM5D was a suitable choice for taking out as few seats as possible, yet delivering everything that was needed from the sound design."
(Jim Evans)
