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Adlib supplies technical production to “Mrs. Brown’s Boys D’Musical!”

Adlib is supplying full technical production - sound, lighting, video and rigging with over 100 points - to the ongoing 2019 arena tour by Brendan O’Carroll and his “Mrs. Brown’s Boys D’Musical!” show.

 

Hassane es Siahi is the FOH engineer, the Adlib systems engineer is Alan Harrison, Steph Fleming is the monitor engineer and Shona Steadman is looking after mics and RF. Lighting has been designed by Mike Summerfield. Fiona Gibney and Gareth Woods are the producers.

 

A Coda system was chosen to deliver sound for the tour. The cast members all use a variety of DPA headset mics. The stage design includes a thrust, so a key for this system design was to have multiple smaller speaker arrays around the rooms, including left-centre-right delays halfway down.

 

The two main PA hangs were smaller than normal - with (max) 12 x Coda AiRay a side, flown slightly further downstage than the standard positioning. The subs were 12 x Coda SCPs, positioned six a side on the floor.

 

The side hangs were kept as discreet as possible - both for acoustics and sightlines - these comprised of up to 8 x AiRays, with four ViRay downs depending on the venue. A flown centre cluster of six ViRay covered the first rows of audience.

 

Coda APS (array point source) speakers were attached - via special brackets - to the lighting trusses just above the corners of the thrust. These, coupled with more HOPS on brackets on the stage, allowed the focus of the audience in the first rows to be drawn directly towards the actors.

 

The delays comprised 8 x ViRays each on the left and right, with eight of the 5-inch TiRays in the centre. All of the flown speakers and those attached to the trusses were powered by 18 amplifiers - 9 a side - and with TiRays, APS’ and HOPS’ being run passive/1 amp channel each and the AiRay and ViRay bi-amped, so 2 channels.

 

Onstage the cast use side-fills for monitoring rather than IEMs. These were an array of 3 flown HOPS each side working in conjunction with two more HOPS on the upstage rail of the front lighting truss, pointing down. The front monitors were also HOPS attached to the front of the thrust via more custom brackets, and slightly angled up.

 

The consoles were both DiGiCo’s - an SD10 for Hassane es Siahi at FOH, Steph Fleming used an SD12 for monitors, and Shona Steadman utilised a DiGiCo S21 to monitor the RF channels. The cast sing live to playback with the tracks stored on a fully redundant 16-channel QLab system. A DiGiCo Optocore network was used to connect and deal with all the track signal routing from the QLab, the FOH and monitor consoles and racks.

 

The QLab rack was built by Adlib and sat at FOH, with lighting for the musical numbers (not the spoken word parts of the set) timecoded. The tracks were triggered by Mike Summerfield at FOH, upon which the QLab sent timecode into his consoles.

 

Lighting and video were project managed from base by Jordan Willis who already worked as a lighting tech on the last tour in 2017. Adlib’s lighting technicians for the tour were Charlie Rushton, Andy Rowe, Stuart Wood, Ben Caunt James Bailie and Matt Brown. Mark Taylor, Matt Hopwood and Darragh Smith were the LED technicians/camera operators with Iain Christie as racks engineer.

 

Adlib supplied two large IMAG screens each 7.5 metres wide by 4 metres high made up from their Unilumin UPADIIIH5 5.9 mm product, together with a 5-metre-wide by 3-metre-high delay screen of the same surface plus and a four-way camera/PPU package.

 

The cameras, all Sony HXC-100s, were deployed two at FOH (with the new Canon UJ90 broadcast lenses) and two on stands in the stage wings in line with the edge of the set which were fitted with HD40 lenses. Cameras were directed by Eric O’Carroll (Brendan’s son) who cut the mix using a Panasonic HS410 switcher.

 

Adlib also supplied some 55-inch monitors for the show relay, placed in various backstage areas. Mike Summerfield sent in his lighting plot to Jordan Willis and the team at Adlib’s new HQ in Knowsley, Merseyside, built the rig to his spec.

 

The lighting design was a re-work of the 2017 tour with lots of extras. The fixture count jumped up from 32 x Martin MAC Viper Washes and 10 Viper Profiles to 38 x Viper Washes and 24 x Profiles. For the extra effects lighting Mike Summerfield added 14 x Claypaky Stormy LED strobes and 10 Chauvet Strike 4 LED blinders, plus two 32” mirror-balls on rotators and 19 large white lampshades.

 

Over stage were three LX trusses - the front at 20 metres, the mid and back at 15 metres and two 10-metre-long side (wing) trusses - with a 15-metre advanced truss slightly out into the audience, all made up from Prolyte sections. The moving lights were divided between all the trusses.

 

The Claypaky Stormies were dotted around the advance, front and side trusses, together with the Strike 4s which were on the advanced truss. They also utilised a 3-way Robe RoboSpot system, with three BMFL WashBeams on the front truss picking up the principals, which were remotely operated via three separate BaseStations located in dimmer world.

 

Two 32-inch mirror balls - each flown on its own small truss - were positioned stage left and right. Far upstage was a 15-metre-wide LED starcloth, and immediately in front of this Adlib provided the motors, trussing and rigging for four custom neon-style LED scenic signs which were commissioned and sourced by production.

 

Adlib created a rigging solution for the special pendant lights which were fitted with domestic bulbs and scenic lamp shades and suspended on variable length mini-steels - 5 from each of the two side trusses, and 15 - all at the same length - off the advance truss.

 

LED tape around the lamps was controlled via the lighting console. Mike Summerfield operated the show via his Road Hog Full Boar and, as mentioned above, also triggered the QLab machine running the music tracks with an Akai MPD218 which sent timecode to his console.

 

(Photos: Steve Sroka)

 

www.adlib.co.uk

 

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