Sir Cliff Richard's ambitious new musical based on Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights opened recently at the National Indoor Arena in Birmingham. Mark Cunningham surveys the complex audio design behind Heathcliff.

Sir Cliff Richard's dream has for some time been to stage and star in a musical based on Emily Bronte's classic early 19th century novel Wuthering Heights. Set in the desolate North Yorkshire moors, this tragic story of passion, betrayal, and revenge was the inspiration behind Kate Bush's 1978 debut single. Titling the project Heathcliff, after the bearded lead character that Cliff chose to play opposite leading lady Helen Hobson's Cathy, the' Cliff Richard Organisation (CRO) commissioned songs from Lyricist Sir Tim Rice and Composer John Farrar, and brought in acclaimed Theatrical Director Frank Dunlop, Production Designer Joe Vanek, Lighting Designer Andrew Bridge, Choreographer Brad Jeffries, and Production Director Dick Parkinson to turn this dream into a workable show, which was, frankly, a brave and highly ambitious move. The result is nothing short of spectacular.

Crucial to the rock'n'roll feel of this stage musical is the sound system design, which has been handled by the experienced triumvirate of Britannia Row Productions' Director Mike Lowe, Cliff Richard's regular FOH Engineer Colin Norfield, and Monitor Engineer John 'JJ' James, the latter two having been familiar faces on Britannia Row's tours over the years.

Despite its name being synonymous with some of the greatest live rock productions of recent years, Brit Row also boasts a little known history in theatre, having worked on shows such as Blood Brothers and Hot Shoe Shuffle. Lowe says: "We don't market ourselves in the mainstream business, but we do occasionally get involved in theatre work and also conferencing, but it's usually on an invitation basis. Having worked with Cliff for six years, we were naturally invited. Like conferencing, when things begin to cross over a little into our regular territory, as Heathcliff certainly does, that's where we can provide our expertise."

DESIGNING THE RIG

The band began rehearsals at CRO's headquarters at Brooklands in Surrey at the same time as the cast started learning their parts at Cecil Sharp House in London. Eventually, the band and cast merged together in Ealing Studios as the production began to grow. There was no firm brief regarding sound at the outset of the project, but rather the sound designers met specific requirements as they were pinpointed during the writing of the music and the finalising of the direction, much of which was put in place at the production rehearsals which began at Earl's Court 2 in mid September. It was important, therefore, to remain flexible in all areas and be able to foresee certain needs arising out of the notable differences in size and acoustics between the four venues: Birmingham's NIA, Edinburgh Playhouse, Manchester Palace Theatre, and the Labatt's Apollo, Hammersmith.

One aspect that was clear from the start was that this show was going to witness the most potent marriage of rock'n'roll and theatre ever staged. "Knowing that the show was going to lean towards rock, we were going to need something more weighty than the average Meyer LIPA-1 theatre system," says Lowe. "That fell into line very nicely for us, because we major in that kind of stuff and we have put in a Turbosound Flashlight/Floodlight combination — which at the NIA (the largest venue, with a 4,500 capacity) consists of 18 TFS-780 highs, 42 TFS-780 lows, 21 TFS-760 highs, four underhung high-mids, and two underhung low-mids. This system is then considerably scaled down at the theatre venues like the Edinburgh Playhouse, for which the total amount of Turbosound boxes is just 20."

Turbosound may form the lion's share of this BSS-amplified PA, but Heathcliff is living proof that Brit Row is not ultimately tied to those trademark blue boxes. It is interesting to find that eight JBL PI710Ps have been chosen to augment the Quad system in the rear 15 rows of the NIA (although they form part of the delay system in the theatres), while five Galaxy Hotspots line the front edge of the proscenium for front row coverage. "The production is very theatrical," says Lowe, "and you cannot deliver loud volume levels to the front row on something like this; the sound has to be well distributed, so we chose a system where there are delays on all balcony levels in the theatres. In the NIA, for example, we have one arc of delays for which we are using nine Floodlight cabinets on four individual delay times. Most of the delays in the theatres will be one delay time per balcony level, although we have the capability of doing possibly three per level, but most are radiating nicely from the stage."

Designing and operating a quadraphonic PA or a rear sound effects system on rock'n'roll tours is normally unfeasible, although Brit Row has had marked success in this area with major artists such as Pink Floyd; now they have the opportunity to shine once more with Heathcliff. Lowe comments: "I think a lot of people would love to do it in rock'n'roll. But doing one nighters back to back and putting Quad on all balcony levels, with all the necessary cabling and scaffolding and additional attention to sound makes the whole thing uneconomic on a rock'n'roll tour."

The diversion away from Turbosound was also apparent in the choice of Quad speakers, as Lowe explains. "We were looking at putting together a Quad system for the theatres, but we had a size problem. The suppliers were not equipped for doing Quad at the back of each balcony level. Obviously, balcony height is only so high, and we really had just a couple of feet to play with before we were getting into sightline difficulties. A lot of the mid-size Turbosound cabinets were still horn-loaded and the direct radiators were too small for the application. I did feel that for what we wanted to achieve, a horn-loaded box was wrong. We really needed a direct radiating studio monitor type of box, but with sound reinforcement capabilities. After hunting around for a while, it was felt that the JBL 4892s gave us what we were looking for. I don't feel that there was anything in the Turbosound range that would have fitted the brief and given us a box of that size with that power, which was a direct radiator."

"The automation on the XL4 is there to activate different scene changes, which would otherwise be very complicated..."

During the last week of rehearsals at Earl's Court, the cast were thrown in at the deep end as they gave two preview performances to a comparatively tiny audience of invited guests. For this purpose, the sound system remained largely as it had for rehearsals, with the addition of a rear Quad installation and some front fills. On the eve of the first preview, Lowe said: "We have been adding bits of the PA so that by the time of the previews, we'll have the full thing up and running. Of course, acoustically, it's an horrendous room, but it was really chosen because of the height needed to get the equipment moved in and out easily, as well as accommodate the set. We looked at baffling the roof and losing the vinyl wall at the back with drapes, carpeting the floor... but then you realise that you're quickly adding £30,000 to the costs just to change the acoustics of Earl's Court 2 for a couple of previews, which will play to a total of about 1,200 people."

In order to provide the ultimate sound system for Heathcliff, Brit Row was forced to invest not only in the JBL Quad and delay speakers, but also a new Yamaha monitor console and a CCTV network to improve technical communications. "We've always carried some stock for when monitor engineers get tucked away in corners where they have no view of the stage," comments Lowe. "So we normally put a camera up there and give him a monitor. This time, however, things have progressed a little further up the line whereby we have three circuits with 9, 14, and 21-inch monitors situated on and around the stage, at each mixing platform and in the production office. One camera shows the MD (Musical Director), one is a long shot of the stage from the back, and the third is an overhead shot from a camera, with an infrared sensitive auto iris lens. There are infrared lights on the stage, so when there is a blackout, the guys operating the moving set can see if there is anybody on stage."

ADVANCE SURVEYS

The sound design team spent some considerable time surveying each of the four performance venues before production rehearsals in order to decide on speaker positions. Wherever suitable, existing points have been used, although in some places bars were introduced for the delays, while bridges and towers have been installed to accommodate the Quad speakers.

"Heathcliff is such a great opportunity for us," says Lowe, "because we are spending weeks at a time at each venue. There are no huge gaps in between venues so we are pre-rigging a lot of equipment. Three weeks before the opening show at the NIA, I got most of the cable and a lot of the flying in the roof put in place. When we pull out of Earl's Court 2, we will pretty much put an entirely different speaker system into the NIA and we'll scoop up what is here and take it away. The situation in Edinburgh will be similar, because we have very tight load-in schedules, with 48 hours in which to make the switch. That would normally be fine, but we have a big set to squeeze into small stages and the rigging parameters are very different to what we would normally experience with rock shows.

"In some respects, it's easier in the theatres than it is in Earl's Court or the NIA, because a lot of stuff will go up on fly bars on this set. If this was a rock'n'roll set, it would be quite complicated to do in a back-to-back gig situation, time being a critical factor. Everything fits together very tightly and the tolerances are very fine. Of course, many major rock shows have been moving in that direction for some time, as they become padded out with projections and drapes, but there are far more scenic elements with this production which require extra time and care, because they are easily damaged."

RECORDED TRACKS

Contrary to speculation in the tabloid press, which was surely the result of journalists not understanding the concept of hidden musicians, miming does not occur during Heathcliff. However, some performances were reinforced with additional vocals and music on backing tracks which were recorded by John Farrar in Los Angeles and also by Musical Director Mike Moran back in England. One of the main reasons for the tracks was to safeguard against illness and croaky voices among the cast, and apart from the occasional insertion of backing vocals, the recorded vocals only exist as a last resort backup. There is, however, no backup whatsoever for the critical dialogue. Should one of the singers fall ill and not be able to perform, Colin Norfield has the simple option of bringing up the appropriate fader on the hard disk track. The only other 'non-performed' sounds are sound effects, such as wind, thunder, birds twittering, and a church bell, and naturally there is a click track on hard disk to aid everyone's timing, including the timing crew.

Just one week into the opening run of shows in Birmingham, Britannia Row purchased a Yamaha 02R digital console to automate the mixing of the backing tracks, which Mike Lowe explains. "The format of the show was still being changed up to around the sixth performance. Sections of dialogue were being cut from the show and so the gaps between each piece of music were shaved, but Colin wanted to manually mix the tracks until the show was established. An 02R had been used to edit the hard disks, so it was always a probability that we might use one for the show. Seeing as there was no more editing to come in the foreseeable future, we decided to automate that side of things and so we bought an 02R from Marquee Audio specially for the task.

"Although it is predominantly a recording mixer, the 02R has some very impressive features for our application, including a marvellous EQ section. In fact, it has a whole menu for EQ settings, and I think that by using this console, young engineers, in particular, will be able to get a grip on practical mixing a lot more quickly."

"Sticking the mics to people's faces has presented a dilemma... if the performers have wigs, we can fix the mics to the lace lining. For others, we are using non-allergenic tape, like Micropore, to tape the mics to skin."

FRONT OF HOUSE

Colin Norfield has been Cliff Richard's FOH Engineer for the last 24 years and, along with The Who's Bobby Pridden (who began working with Townshend and co. in 1966), is one of the longest-serving engineers to any one artist. As a regular Britannia Row crew member, he has also earned his stripes with Pink Floyd on the 1994 Division Bell world tour and with a volatile bunch of Mancunians called Oasis.

For Heathcliff, Norfield was using an automated 48-channel Midas XL4 fitted with six stereo channels and a fully manual 40-channel XL3. The combination enables him to control a total of 78 lines plus effects returns. Since the introduction of the Yamaha 02R during the NIA run, however, he has changed the 40-channel XL3 for a 16-channel model, which has an on-board Quad pan pot for the routing of sound effects and vocal delays. "The automation on the XL4 is there to activate different scene changes, which would otherwise be very complicated," explains Norfield. "I have the band assigned to the left-hand side of the XL4 and they are all on VCAs in the middle so that I don't have to keep leaning over to mix them. When I go to the next scene, the desk will automatically change the band levels for me. That leaves me to concentrate on the vocals which are right in front of me.

"I have a Lexicon 480L and a PCM 80 for reverbs, and a Yamaha SPX-900 for snare reverb and another 900 on a different setting for tom reverb. There is just one machine handling delays, which is the Roland SDE-330. But you can spend so much time messing with effects, and I'm not a great believer in having hundreds of effects. I have a whole load of other gear by Yamaha, Summit, and also the new Neve 9098 EQ units, and I am using them to some extent, but the more time you spend sodding around with all that stuff, the less time you spend on the main tasks. The reverbs are there just to lighten the sound of certain things."

For the most part, the Earl's Court rehearsals were run to schedule. Although talking to Norfield only three days before the first preview, it was obvious that, coming from a rock'n'roll background, he would have preferred more opportunities to engineer the complete show, from beginning to end. "That's not the way of the theatre world, unfortunately, and it has been common for the cast to work on a section in the first half, and then go straight into a section near the end of the second half, depending on which scenes require the most work," he says. "For me, however, the continuity that you get from a full run-through makes things easier to turn things on and off ahead of time."

Assisting Norfield as front-of-house 'babysitter' has been Huw Richards, a fellow Oasis man. Richards is certainly no stranger to theatre, having spent the early part of his engineering career based at the London Palladium. Norfield says: "We've known each other for a long time, and I've helped him out on a few Oasis shows, but this is, of course, another ball game entirely! It's always great to have someone working with you who thinks in 'like' terms. Because we haven't been doing the run-throughs, there is more and more pressure all the time. By the time of the previews, I will only have done two full run-throughs which really is not enough for me to feel totally comfortable. Huw is taking notes as we go along so if I am concentrating on mixing, I'll turn around and ask him to note something. If I am writing notes while mixing at the same time, I end up missing half the cues and that's obviously no good at all."

"The idea of the in-ears isn't to give them a mix as such, it's to aid them to perform better..."

MONITORING

Situated at the side of stage left and in charge of monitoring is Engineer John 'JJ' James, who runs a 52/22-channel Yamaha PM4000M console, linked to a sub-board stretch which allows him to control a further 11 channels. Although predominantly a live rock'n'roll engineer who has worked with the likes of The Cure, Depeche Mode, and Oasis, JJ's work has occasionally led him into the theatrical field, on shows such as Oh Calcutta, as well as into conferencing which commands similar disciplines. "Like theatre," says JJ, "you're not working with optimum mic positions and you have to fight for your levels, but I do find it interesting."

Watching JJ operate his non-automated PM4000M during a run-through in rehearsals made me question whether some degree of automation might offer any benefit. "I don't think automation would really work for monitors in a practical situation, because there are so many individual sends," he says. "At front of house, you can automate the VCAs and mutes and groups, but it's different in monitor land. I could probably have an XL4, like the one Colin has, but it wouldn't necessarily be an advantage. We're really pushed for space as well — not in Earl's Court for rehearsals, but when we hit the theatres, things will get fairly cramped. I am going to be flown eight feet in the air so that the area below me can be left clear for quick changes and people hurtling on and off stage."

The biggest challenge faced by both Norfield and JJ on Heathcliff has been to master the engineering, while following the endless but crucial cues. "The cueing is quite heavy going," comments Norfield. "Most people assume that a Cliff Richard show is an easy one, but it's far from easy, and by its very nature, Heathcliff is the most complex thing he's ever done. It's very slick, and even on the last tour, The Hit List, it was difficult because we were going from one number which was 30 years old and you had to create that kind of flavour, into an up-to-date song which required a very modern feel."

"We have to work to the script, almost word by word, because the cues are so tight," says JJ. "So I'm spending most of the time staring at the computer screen, head down with a pair of cans on for two hours. Assembling the cues and trying to make some sense of it all has been no mean feat, because there's a hint of confusion at times, with people walking on and off, and us trying to understand who is singing at a given point. If someone's trying to perform and there are others back here changing costumes, they are inevitably bashing away on their mics and thumping and banging, so that all has to be muted, otherwise it will disturb the others on stage. Obviously it has to be muted by Colin at front of house, but I have to mute as well, otherwise it'll be in everyone's ears."

JJ is referring to the popular Garwood Radio Station in-ear monitoring system, which was purchased from Hand Held Audio by CRO specifically for the show as part of a plan to minimise sound levels on stage and only use a few loudspeakers — two Turbosound 1 x 12-inch monitors in the truss and a further two mid-stage — mainly to aid the dancers and act as a backup to the in-ear systems. There are five in-ear mixes spread between the 12 performers using the system. The groups assigned these mixes are: Cliff; the female lead; three principal cast members; female backing vocalists; and male backing vocalists.

Cliff, who back in the late 1980s was one of the first major artists to embrace IEM as an alternative to conventional wedge monitoring, has a strong click track signal in his mix, along with regular vocal reverb and 'symphonic' processing, care of a Yamaha SPX-990 and a 900. Further on down the cast, which is mainly composed of actors unfamiliar with live rock'n'roll technology, the in-ear mixes become drier and more instantly intelligible. "The idea of the in-ears isn't to give them a mix as such, it's to aid them to perform better," explains JJ. "So I don't need to clutter the sound with treatments they don't need. They need the click to keep them in time and some musical reference to keep them in pitch, and obviously some feeds of other performers for cues. They don't need a full mix and I'm certainly not giving it to them. We've experienced no technical problems with the IEM system, but we have had trouble getting the performers to wear them properly — apart from Cliff, I don't think anyone has used this kind of equipment before."

Despite its advantages, Colin Norfield says that IEM gave him a few headaches early on in rehearsals. "It does help me enormously that having an in-ear system means that the stage is nice and quiet, but it can sometimes be a hassle because when everyone is hearing it nicely in their ears, they tend to back off vocally and I'm left wondering where everyone's gone! Most bands and their engineers suffer from that problem when they use IEM for the first few gigs. Cliff understands it and he's very on the ball. But the members of the cast with theatrical experience are used to singing out loud, because they do not have monitoring. I've had to tell them that they just need to adopt a different technique for this show."

Apart from the IEM system, JJ sends sub groups of channels to the musicians in a customised Redburn Transfer truck, who are using small personal Formula Sound QUE-10 monitor mixers. He comments: "The band, who are remote from the stage and from me, are all wearing wired Sennheiser headphones and can basically mix things the way they like it as individuals. For absolute dire emergencies, we have a pair of 1 x 15-inch monitors in the truck so that if this whole lot goes wrong, I can simply whizz a mix through to the musicians in that way."

Outboard processing has been kept simple. JJ uses four different reverbs, and there is compression assigned to each radio mic, especially those used by actors who are prone to extreme dynamics at times. "There is very little in the way of graphics, because everything is in-ear and I find that there's no need for EQ. Everything is run pretty flat, but there's quite a bit of high-pass filtering to keep the low end out of things."

RADIO MICROPHONES

In addition to the Garwood system and the Formula Sound mixers, CRO has also invested in a comprehensive Sennheiser radio microphone system for Heathcliff. Operating this side of the show, adjacent to JJ, is freelance Radio Systems Engineer Vince Sharpe, who says that the decision to buy the equipment was made many months before the beginning of the rehearsal period. "Obviously, myself, JJ, and Colin as sound engineers are people who know about these things, and I suppose CRO listened to what we had to say and made purchases accordingly," says Sharpe.

The 16-way Sennheiser EM2004 system, which was set up for use by Barry MacLeod of Hand Held Audio, is spread out over Channels 35 and 3.6. There are eight possible frequencies on each of the two channels, and Sharpe is using 14 at any one given time. He says: "It's quite a complex system. When we originally took it on, we were told that 11 channels was the most we could have, but we twisted Sennheiser's arm to give us 16, although we have ended up using only 14. It gets quite complicated, because on most productions you will tend to use only five or six, so 14 is pretty extreme. That's a lot of units to squash in the window of the frequency band, and it wasn't surprising to find that we had a lot of problems in the first few days with RF interference, dropouts, and splashes across the different frequencies. But we seem to have cleared all that up with attenuation."

"We have to work to the script, almost word by word, because the cues are so tight..."

Rather than use the standard Sennheiser omnidirectional microphone designed for musicals, the MKE-2, which is prone to feedback in rock'n'roll situations, Sharpe chose the cardioid MKE-104 which at one time was competing alongside its AKG rival for a place in the show. Quick to praise the audio quality of the MKE-104, he says: "We had a problem because the mic's peak SPL is around 120dB, and some of the guys — when they are screaming in the fight scenes — are going way above that, so we've ordered some more mics that will allow us to go higher than that. It's a fairly standard type of mic and capsule with a narrow pick-up beam. We did some AB tests with a similar mic from AKG, which was their standard theatre product, but Sennheiser seemed to have the edge. Something about the system that I find tremendously helpful is that the eight hour rechargeable batteries in the transmitter beltpacks consistently last for exactly eight hours — we've timed them!"

Although regarded by many in the industry as one of the top radio systems in existence, Sharpe believes that the EM2004 is overly complicated. "I think that coming from rock'n'roll, JJ, Colin, and I expected too much of it," he says. "There are faults and problems, because it is such a small microphone and radio frequencies are not as good as solid cable. We've just had to live with compromises and make the best of what we can do. Now that we have been at Earl's Court 2 for a few weeks and are really on the case, the show is sounding a lot better than any other musical I've been to and that appears to be the general comment from visitors."

Traditionally, users of miniature radio headset mics in theatre have positioned them above and in front of their foreheads, but the Heathcliff cast have been directed to have them fixed down the sides of their faces, along the jaw line, in an attempt to capture more mouth resonance and an improved audio signal. Miking has been the most significant aspect of the show to affect Norfield and his approach was to gain a full sound with maximum consistency. "The closer you can get the microphone to the mouth, the better for me," he says. "We talked long and hard to Cliff about this and tried to enforce the issue, because he was happy with the mic further away. He was mostly worried that the audience would see the mic, but I kept telling him, 'Why shouldn't they? It's live, after all'. With makeup and whatever, it's reasonably simple to hide it."

Sharpe comments: "Sticking the mics to people's faces has presented a dilemma, especially as they are running around and sweating under the lights. We think we've got that one covered now because if the performers have wigs, we can fix the mics to the lace lining. For others, we are using non-allergenic tape, like Micropore, to tape the mics to skin. It's quite crucial that the mics stay in position, because if they move 2-3mm in the wrong direction, all the audio quality disappears. But sound quality is of paramount importance."

One problem that required nipping in the bud early on was that of off-stage user discipline. "When a member of the cast turns their mic off, it then leaves that receiver open to receive all the others. So discipline with the cast has been a major obstacle. When they are off stage, the audio side of the radio will always be muted, and they become unmuted as soon as they walk on stage. But I can listen to everything they are doing in their dressing rooms, or wherever they choose to go [the mind boggles!]. So when they say nasty things about me, I'm the first to know about it!"

There is the facility to listen on headphones to the mics at source before the signals reach the mixing desks. Although there are headphone amps on each of the individual Sennheiser receivers, he maintains that the task is made easier by using an audio patchbay, namely the Signex ARC-32 Smartpatch, which allows him to flick through each of the channels in real-time. "It has 128 internal patch memories, access to every function is on the front panel, and it's very simple to use," he says. "It's a case of monitoring each mic in turn, and if there are any problems occurring, I'll be the first one to notice, and from then on, it's battle stations."

Indeed, in the case of total radio mic system failure in crucial dialogue scenes, the show is safeguarded – five AKG float mics across the front of the stage and there's an AKG rifle mic in each wing.

Opening the show and appearing as a wandering troubadour is acoustic guitar virtuoso Gordon Giltrap. He says: "It's an absolute thrill to be in Heathcliff. Being the first on stage is quite nerve-wracking, but the good thing for me is that as well as performing some music that I've written especially for the show, I get to play John Farrar's music, like the Overture, in my own style."

Guitar fans will note that Gordon uses three instruments during the show — the slender Rob Armstrong guitar that he has used for the past ten years, a 'baby' Armstrong, and a new Phil Vigor custom model. "Phil replicated Rob's slender and came to me to see what I thought of it," he says. "It coincided neatly with Heathcliff and I needed a spare so it was perfect. On all three guitars, I use the humbucking Mimisis blend pick-up system by Mike Vanden, and I also have the Shure EC1-EH VHP guitar transmitter."