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“Jeff Wayne’s Musical Version of The War of the Worlds” continues with Martin Audio’s MLA

The constantly evolving production of “Jeff Wayne’s Musical Version of The War of the Worlds” - which has been touring arenas for sixteen years - has been revitalised, with a new cast, additional music and an immersive experience for audiences.

A regular feature over the past twelve years has been sound designer and consultant Simon Honywill in the FOH mixing position, and a Martin Audio PA delivering the sound, while RG Jones Sound Engineering have again provided the inventory of sound equipment. Honywill, who is now on his sixth tour of duty, adopted Martin Audio’s MLA back in 2012 and has used it ever since.

This time around, for a production dubbed “The Life Begins Again” tour, Honywill says despite his extensive experience of the production and the venues it visits, the challenges remain the same. “It never gets any easier”, he admits. “The schedule is pretty gruelling, but as time has gone on, we are now very confident about using Martin Audio’s Display2 shells from previous shows to speed up the process of system optimisation and array deployment.”

Honywill uses up to twenty MLA per side as main left/right hangs, a maximum sixteen MLA Compact on each wing as side hangs, and flown left/right infills of eight MLA Mini to assist with vocal clarity near the stage. Explaining this last deployment, he says, “The main hangs are well upstage of the downstage edge, so to give us more control over the headset vocal mics we use on the singers, the MLA Mini are deployed as flown stereo infills with a high-pass filter put in at around 250 Hz. Additional coverage close to the stage is achieved with four pairs of MLA Mini front fills, spaced across the stage and hidden behind acoustically transparent panels in the stage dressing.”

The main difference with the rig this time around is the sub bass arrangement. “System engineers Steve Carr and Rylan Machin and I looked at alternatives to previous tours, where a compromised broadside array was placed under the stage about 4 m upstage from the downstage edge”, explains Honywill. “There is a great deal of stage machinery for lifts and hologram screens under the stage, along with walking routes for artists and techs - and so space is limited. The original idea was to fly the MLX subs, but weight was an issue in many venues. We had to find a way to get maximum even coverage whilst taking up the least amount of real estate and maintaining the integrity of the array. Rylan came up with the idea of using a combination of broadside and end-fire arrangements.”

There was only one new arena on the circuit - the relatively new Bonus Arena in Hull, where the system was set up without a pre-existing room profile in D2. “It’s basically a very large theatre in classic shoebox style, but the team excelled in getting the system ready in time for accurate tuning and timing, despite restricted space to fly the system in”, says Honywill. By the team, he means Carr, Machin and Nathan Kennedy. “Nathan’s daily job of finding and rigging suitable points for the surround effects speakers - up to eight WPS per side - has been extremely difficult in some arenas, but we’ve ended up with as good a result as we could every time”, he notes.

Other members of the audio team include Becky Pell on monitors. Honywill also credits RF specialist Ricky Spiers. “COVID has been busy getting at us all, and Rick has had to deal with radio mics and in-ears for the artists daily, some of whom are understandably COVID-paranoid.” RG Jones has been supplying “The War of the Worlds” since 2009, and this outing also saw the return of Production Director Steve Nolan, Production Manager Andy Proudfoot and many other regular faces that have been involved from the start.

(Photos: Andrew Benge)

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