Hot on the trail of another theatrical production, Mark Cunningham visits the historic Lyceum Theatre in London and discovers the background to the revitalised stage musical classic, Jesus Christ Superstar.

Almost 25 years to the day that it first opened at London's Palace Theatre, Jesus Christ Superstar, arguably Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber's finest work, returned to the capital in November of last year in a new-look production fit for the 1990s and beyond. To those of us of a certain 'thirtysomething' disposition, our love-hate relationship with stage musicals probably began with Jesus Christ Superstar — I certainly have a vivid memory of watching the awesome sight of the virtually unknown Paul Nicholas succumbing to the cross in his role as 'Jesus'. Some might say that his subsequent pop star dabblings were deserving of a similar fate in real life!

Back then, theatre sound was in its infancy and the rock content of the show — more of a staged concert than the current musical theatre production — influenced the decision to make it one of the first-ever amplified musicals, with sound design by David Collison. Hand-held wired microphones were, of course, the order of the day, and much of the choreography was designed around the movement of the mic cables.

This time around, the title role is played by erstwhile rock singer/songwriter Steve Balsamo, whose name was only slightly familiar as the opening support act on the bill of last summer's Masters Of Music concert in Hyde Park. Sound design is by Richard Ryan, who has previously worked on Sunset Boulevard, Aspects Of Love, and By Jeeves, over the course of his 10 years in theatre. His efforts on Superstar, in close association with service company TP Sound, represent a new theatre standard. And if anything, the current production at the newly-refurbished Lyceum Theatre is a testimony to how far the technology and demands of theatre sound and lighting have progressed over the last quarter of a century.

Almost as soon as Apollo Leisure took over the Lyceum's lease in 1994, Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Really Useful Group decided this would be the perfect venue in which to revive this show, and a deal with the new leaseholders was struck. A mammoth rebuilding programme, however, was needed to put the theatre back on its feet; the first stage being the demolition of the building from the proscenium wall backwards. As a result, the whole of the stage and backstage area, and the right-hand side of the theatre is completely new, built after the auditorium was refurbished. Two years after commencement of this programme, the work was completed just days before the first preview on November 9 of last year.

Some of the reconstruction was undertaken specifically for Superstar. The stage now protrudes into the auditorium and is raised to accommodate sightlines for the upstairs balcony level. As a consequence of slightly raising the stage height, a false floor was installed to ensure good sightlines for the stalls audience. My pre-show guide around the Lyceum, Production Sound Engineer Mike Walker, also with 10 years' theatre experience, became involved in the project shortly after Richard Ryan's appointment as Sound Designer last August. Walker says: "At that point, they had just started installing the false floor and some of the set, which actually includes audience seating for 80 in the tribune seats either side. Richard specified the sound equipment and also the standards of infrastructure, which then went out to tender, and TP Sound was awarded the supply of the show."

CADAC COUNTRY

Mixing the show at front-of-house is David Ogilvy, whom I last met when he was working on Tommy. As on that show, he is manning a Cadac J-Type console, the design of which was aided by the involvement of two of the world's leading theatre sound designers, namely Martin Levan and Andrew Bruce. This time, Ogilvy has the added advantage of a new F-Type, seen here for the first time in a London theatre. Mike Walker says that these desks arrived at the Lyceum four days before the company started work due to the excessive dust and rubble on site.

"Cadac has become a musical theatre standard for mixing desks. A lot of features on other desks are biased towards either the recording studio market or live rock'n'roll, but the J-Type has all the facilities on it that you need for the majority of musicals, and some rival manufacturers are now beginning to incorporate them into their products.

"Most other desks are of fixed frame sizes, incorporating either 40, 48 or 56 inputs, so there is a standard footprint. But, being modular, the J-Type allows you to divide it and put together the optimum shape of mixing position. Here, we have effectively cut the desk in two and chosen the required frame sizes (44 and 30 modules) according to the allocated space. There is a very small mainframe with 14 sub-groups, 28 matrix outputs, and 14 DC masters for some of the wireless radio microphones, and a much larger side frame with the remainder of the radios on it."

To the right of this sawn-in-half console is the 46 module frame F-Type, which is used exclusively for the band's mix and sends the signals to two subgroups that appear on the J-Type under flying fader control. This new Cadac model boasts more rock'n'roll orientated features than its older brother, such as four-band EQ and high and low-pass filters. Walker explains: "The J-Type has three-band EQ and just a high-pass filter, which is fine for most theatre work, but limiting for rock'n'roll. On the J-Type, the module and faders are separated which means that the faders are horizontal, whereas on the more economical F-Type, everything is on the one module. The F-Type is slightly more limited, because it has 12 sub-groups and a maximum of 24 ways of matrixing, compared to the J-Type's 16 sub-groups and 32 matrix permutations."

The J-Type in use on this show has 50 inputs — 44 with manual VCA faders and six with motorised faders. Run by two Dell Optiplex computers, the console automation is used to re-group radio mics under DC master control, the faders for which are equipped with highly legible alphanumeric displays. In the 'Overture', the automation groups the band, band reverb, and surround on three VCAs, the first principal radio mic enters on one VCA and chorus radios on another. In the next cue, for 'Heaven On Their Minds', all of the mics are muted apart from the one used by the song's performer, Judas (played by Zubin Varla). Walker says: "In terms of actual automation, there isn't a huge amount, but what it does is vital to the smooth running of the show. Its prime use is for muting and re-grouping, but it also deals with some routers on the left-hand side of the desk. They have discrete inputs and can be routed to any one of the sub-groups or matrix outputs. It is also used for some effects to route band signals, voices, and the earthquake sound effects from the Denon DN-1500 MiniDisc recorder."

Another important element of the automation is the changing of MIDI programmes. The desk can trigger delay units and reverbs, cue by cue. Two Yamaha DMP-11 digital mixers are in the outboard rack to sub-mix drums and percussion, and they can be cued from the J-Type to cut out extraneous mics or re-balance as necessary. Also wholly automated are the outboard Yamaha DEQ-5 digital graphic EQ/delay and YDP-2006 parametric EQ/delay used for system equalisation.

"It's a very neat way of dealing with EQ during the production period, because you are operating from a Macintosh Powerbook 190 (running Yamaha QS-1 software), rather than grovelling on your hands and knees under the mixers to adjust settings in the racks," says Walker. "You can recall whole banks of memories from the devices in sequential order, all at the laptop computer."

RADIO STATION

Backstage at the Lyceum, Engineers Emma Watwood (ex-Grease) and Jo Wredden take responsibility for the radio microphone and in-ear monitoring racks. The show is totally reliant on six racks of Sennheiser EM-1046 wireless receivers with 14 on Channel 69, 16 between Channels 35 and 36, five between Channels 22 and 25, and five more on VHF. They are all running on the proprietary Sennheiser software from an Amiga 600 computer. The cast employs a mixture of Sennheiser MKE-2 lavaliers, some Danish Pro Audio DPA-4060s, and Sony ECM-77s. Of the 40 radio mics available, 38 are put to use every night. Walker says: "It's a loud show — a rock opera. They didn't want to use hand-held mics so we were pushed to see how much we could get out of lavalier radios. There are 36 people in the company including swings, but the swings are choreographed into the show and have solo lines and little parts that are important so everybody at some point needs a radio mic. It's quite a fast and furious show, and quite short as well, so the chance of being able to choreograph radio mics was non-existent, especially when considering the desired style of sound."

Jesus and Judas, who are on stage for most of the show, each wear two mics around the forehead area with the transmitters in the small of their backs, and Walker says that the attempts to disguise them have been made difficult by certain costume changes. He also reports that the vocals are subject to minimal treatments. "We have a couple of compressors, including the Aphex 106 Easyrider four-channel automatic compressor, two of which are used over eight of the radio mics. We also have some BSS TCS-804 delays inserted on six principals' mics, plus another over the sub-group for the chorus vocals and one inserted over the band. We add a little reverb from Lexicon PCM 90s to the voices and the band, and there are two PCM 80s on some more sub-groups to provide effects into the surround sound system. Other than that, the mics are left to fend for themselves!"

(LACK OF) FOLDBACK

This show qualifies in many ways as an 'in the round' production. With speakers positioned all the way around the auditorium, the use of front-of-stage float mics and monitor wedges would have resulted in a feedback dilemma. Certainly, the float mics would have been pointing at one or more speakers, and some members of the audience would have been hearing the foldback. Fortunately, the cast are able to hear a workable band mix on stage, via the main house system. There are also two EAW KF-650i three-way active loudspeakers in front of the pit, which act as a focus for the band, pointing out to the audience and firing across the stage to give extra body to the sound the actors hear.

In-ear monitoring (IEM), however, proved to be a vital tool for Judas whose role calls for much running about during the show, and at one point, he even flies in, Tarzan-style, from a rope above the proscenium arch, where it is impossible to hear any intelligible mix.

"The orchestra are quite a way back in the black hole at the rear of centre stage, so they are quite a way behind the main action," explains Walker, "and there was some concern over time delay between the actors hearing the band and responding correctly. There is quite a lot of video monitoring installed so they can see the conductor for timing, but there is also the problem of pitch. Richard allowed for quite a lot of IEM being part of the show if required, and we did try it in various situations. Sometimes it worked, but at others it didn't provide any real help at all, so we narrowed its use down to the one member of the cast who couldn't really do without it. Whereas the initial specification included 13 sets of Garwood ear pieces and LV1 receivers, at the end of the day we have just the one System 3 running for Judas.

"We store the IEM control rack remote from the stage in our sound room. The rack houses a Samson PL-1602 stereo eight-channel line mixer with a Yamaha SPX 1000 across it to liven up the sound in the ear pieces. An Aphex 320A Compellor compressor/limiter is on the output of the mixer, inserted before the transmitter. Through the system, Judas receives a stereo mix from the band, a mix of vocals from an auxiliary, and his own voice. In live rock'n'roll, the performer is on-stage for most of the show, and in any case, a monitor engineer will take care of muting. But this is a fluid show with people running around from start to finish, so there is a technical and logistical problem: we need him to come to his monitors pre-fade, but ideally post-muting, so that if he goes off-stage, he won't hear RF drop-out in his ears."

With what is essentially a rock'n'roll band working within a confined space, it is not surprising that health and safety noise issues have reared their head with the red tape brigade. The musicians — a drummer, two guitarists, bass player, pianists, two keyboard players, two horn players, two woodwind, a percussionist, three trumpets, and three trombones — mostly monitor via Sennheiser HD-265 headphones. While the brass, horn players, and percussionist receive mixes directly from auxiliaries on the front-of-house F-Type, which is sent to Rane HC6 headphone console amps, the pianist, bassist, guitarists, and drummer use Formula Sound QUE-8 personal mixers. The keyboard players, flautist, and sax player (the latter two both play Yamaha WX11 synth wind instruments, programmed by American company, Music Arts Technologies, Inc.) have Shure M267s dealing with their foldback mixes. Two EAW MS-20 full-range monitors, meanwhile, are set up for use by the musical director, again from an F-Type desk auxiliary.

"We try to make as many of the aspects of the sound as constant as possible," comments Walker. "If the balance is wrong in the orchestra pit, it will be wrong in the house. So it is preferable that the balance is dealt with there, rather than having someone constantly battling on the desk out front."

My previous visit to the Lyceum was in 1981 when drummer Terry Bozzio's band Missing Persons delivered a memorable show. This venue was, in fact, home to many a rock and pop concert during the late 1960s, '70s, and early '80s, including John Lennon & the Plastic Ono Band's War Is Over event in December 1969 and Bob Marley's classic 1975 performance, from which the definitive live version of 'No Woman No Cry' came.

The Lyceum Theatre is now in its sixth incarnation under the control of new leaseholders, the Apollo Leisure Group, who planned from the outset to re-open the building as a live theatre venue after a decade of inactivity. The building originally opened in 1772 as the headquarters of the Society of Artists, and first became known as a theatrical centre when it was a temporary home for the Drury Lane Company after the Theatre Royal burned down. Mixed fortunes turned to major success in 1871 when a production of The Bells played to full houses for 150 nights. The lead actor, Henry Irving, is credited as the man responsible for the popularity of the Lyceum at this time, and as manager, he led the venue to new heights during the late 19th century. In this era of candle and gaslight, fire was a constant threat and the main reason for the theatre's intermittent closure and rebuilding work.

Several owners and reconstructions later, the Lyceum staged its last major production for nearly 50 years when John Gielgud, Fay Compton, and Jack Hawkins starred in Hamlet in the summer of 1939. After World War II, multifarious uses of the theatre followed, but August 1985 saw its demise after staging the National Theatre's The Mysteries. Brent Walker took over the lease with plans of a non-theatrical nature. However, Apollo Leisure acquired control in 1994 and was awarded planning permission from Westminster City Council. The freehold is owned by The Theatre's Trust and the stipulation was laid down that whoever bought the lease and refurbished the Lyceum would be bound to maintain the original character. The future of this 1,850 seat premier venue has never been in safer hands, it seems.