ORBITAL

As the longest running Broadway musical in the West End, and one of the biggest theatrical triumphs of all-time, Chicago has become an established global brand.

    Celebrating its 10-year involvement with the multi-award winning, global musical success, Chicago’s theatre sound specialist Orbital sizzled with pride at the show’s star-studded recent 10th anniversary gala performance in the Cambridge Theatre.

    Over the years, Orbital has worked closely with the show’s appointed UK sound designer Rick Clarke whose design has played a major role in delivering this Kander & Ebb extravaganza to its UK audiences and those as far afield as South Africa, Sweden and Russia. In fact, Chicago boasts three international tours and has played in 25 countries worldwide. Having clocked up in excess of 18,000 performances worldwide, it is estimated that 19 million people have seen the show.

    The 2002 movie version of the musical — starring Renée Zellweger, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Richard Gere and Queen Latifah — took home six Oscars including Best Picture. The success of the film only fuelled Chicago’s fire, packing the houses nightly in the West End as well as a touring company in the UK.

    One of the magical elements of the show’s design is the enormous attention to detail and innovative use of the actors’ radio mics to amplify dance steps and finger snaps, the judge’s gavel and the familiar NBC three note chimes, as well as countless other details signatory to Chicago which really bring the score to life.

    The main challenge by far for Rick Clarke was the band on stage — essentially projecting straight into the audience. He recalls: “I didn’t want to use sound baffles as that would have detracted from the intimacy of being right with the band, feeling the music through the ‘jazz’ experience.”

    His solution was to place the louder instruments, like drums and brass, on the highest level at the back of the grandstand, so they projected over the cast’s heads, with the quieter instruments to the front.

    Great attention was also given to each instrument and the band’s dynamic. By carefully amplifying the quieter instrumentation and at times barely amplifying the louder elements at all, this provided an ever- changing electro-acoustic balance, projecting each section of the orchestra into auditorium slightly differently.

    Microphones centre around high quality Neumann KM and U-series across the brass, woodwind and two upright pianos. Sennheiser and Beyer models are also used for drums and percussion and mounted as discreetly as possible, almost invisible to the audience. In fact, any on-stage equipment was kept to an absolute minimum so as to keep the illusion of it just being a ‘band on stage’.

    In order to achieve a seamless balance of ‘live’ and amplified sound to each seating area, each ‘section’ of the band required its own matrixed set of sub groups, with individual imaging delay applied. The vocal reinforcement presented its own challenges, whilst being less complex.

    As the acting area is so shallow, very few upstage/downstage time alignment changes are needed during the show. However, both Roxie and Velma (the female leads) sing from the extreme left/right proscenium walls at different times, necessitating a couple of clever time-alignment ‘imaging’ tricks, achieved by varying the amount of delay that is applied to a character depending on the scene recalled in the Yamaha PM5D.

DIGITAL
Whilst the key design elements of the show have remained consistent based around the 14-piece band on stage, what has changed is the advent of digital solutions.

    In late 1997, when Chicago was installed to The Adelphi, it was still the era of pre-digital FOH solutions. The show was originally mixed on a 56-channel Amek Langley Recall, with a 24-channel Amek 501 acting as a loudspeaker matrix system. Whilst a bulky solution compared to the current PM5D, for its time Amek offered a rare set of powerful automation features that only became mainstream when digital mix solutions evolved.

    The Yamaha PM5D was integrated to the design when Chicago moved to the Cambridge Theatre in 2006. Its tiny footprint, compared to the Amek, revealed the potential to release 10 additional seats, impacting dramatically on the cost vs. profit ratio. Plus as a perfect touring workhorse, the PM5D is con-currently deployed on Chicago’s UK tour also supplied by Orbital.

THE GALA
The 10th anniversary gala performance was a particular challenge in that there were an additional 40 cast members, featuring celebrity appearances by Tony Hadley, Bonnie Langford and Nigel Planer, and many of the original cast including Ruthie Henshall, Jennifer Ellison and Henry Goodman.

    In order to cope with the expanded cast, Clarke deployed the new Zaxcom digital wireless system for the first time. At the Adelphi, the show used Trantec’s S5000 system, which was upgraded to its newer model, the S6000, after a few years.

    The Zaxcom system ran alongside the S6000 system on the gala night and proved itself invaluable, delivering the show in crystal clear audio, free of any ‘companding’ effects, essential on this special occasion. For the first time, critical remote gain control of its minute transmitters was achieved through a separate 2.4GHz RF link in London’s West End. This innovative feature is unique to Zaxcom, which is very useful on opening nights, when voice levels can be surprisingly louder than expected.

    So impressive was Zaxcom’s performance that Chicago’s London production is now upgrading all the radio mics to this fully digital option. By replacing the Trantec’s, Chicago’s management is planning for the show’s future success, very aware of the long-term threat by Ofcom to reduce the radio bandwidth available to theatres, even though — as of December — there has been a degree of leniency offered to the PMSE users group.

    Clarke enthused: “The time pressure on the day was immense so the first time we heard the Zaxcom system was at the mic check. The difference in quality was very noticeable to everyone at the sound desk.”

    Always on the edge of advanced technology, Chicago was one of the first shows to use DPA miniature head-worn microphones. DPA is still used with 4063s being deployed on the Zaxcom’s for the gala performance.

    Chicago has always been delivered through d&b audiotechnik loudspeakers — it currently features a combination of d&b E9s on the proscenium with a cluster of C690s used as the main vocal system. And a collection of E0 speakers along the stage front ensures the audience’s ears are drawn to the stage. A further 40 E0s are used as under balcony delays, with six d&b E18 bass enclosures filling out the bottom end.

    Through its sensationally dazzling decade’s run in London’s West End, Chicago has also deployed over 14,871 pairs of tights, 581 metres of fishnet fabric, 871 metres of black lace fabric, 2,321 litres of washing up liquid, 760 pairs of men’s socks, 136,520 hairpins and 9,666 hairgrips. But enough about the sound crew!