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Les Mis 2004 - Queens Theatre "West End Tour" | 2004
Les Miserables
David Hersey
LES MISERABLES, 2004 Queens Theatre - the "West End Tour"
This was the transfer of the show from its original home at the Palace (which Andrew Lloyd Webber owned and wanted for his new musical The Woman In White) to the Queen's Theatre, which Cameron Mackintosh owns.
The Queen's is smaller than the Palace, so a new set was required; the one built for this was designed as a touring set since there was some feeling that the show would not have an extended life in the theatre. Ultimately it was given major boosts by the Susan Boyle rendition of "Dreamed a Dream" on the "Britain's Got Talent" tv show, and then by the Les Mis movie, so it kept on selling. Watching the show a couple of nights before it closed I realised that the side bridges (supporting the side light position and the side followspots)
actually still had their wheels on the bottom, ready to tour. The set was quite considerably smaller. This made it quite hard work to make the lighting work as it had, particularly in the positions where people vanished from site as they spun upstage on the revolve. They were sometimes just a little too close to truly vanish as they had previously. The rig also became a bit more concealed than it had been in earlier versions.
The rig was an expanded/updated version of the "tour" rig. StudioColors were replaced with VL2000 Washes. Many conventional gobo lights (including the "whirlpool" effect) were consolidated into a number of VL2000 Spots. Some of the DLCs became Pitching DLCs, opening up new options. Captions came from a VL3500 Spot, which added the ability to shift colour or zoom the captions at the danger that if the light failed you lost all of the captions, not just one. Additional VL3500 Spot overhead to do a giant whirlpool effect. Some VL500s on the perch as roving specials. Early use of LED lighting hidden away in the scenic portals in front of the proscenium arch.
Little changes were made to the rig during its run, mainly caused by Cameron Mackintosh refurbishing the theatre and deciding he didn't like intrusive lighting fixtures, so for example the FOH VSFX cloud projectors became, I think, the City Theatrical cloud effect. Quite late in the run I think the original Pani beam lights were replaced with a different kind of beam light, presumably because of spare parts availability.
Control originally from a Strand 520i, with control of the Light Curtains via DMX now integrated into the console. During the run this was replaced by an ETC Ion. Rig rented from White Light.
I've included the lighting plan, plus the moving light focus list and some samples of the moving light focus plot, which had now moved to digital photography. There's also a printout of the lighting console data from the ETC Ion, as at the closing performance. Anyone picking through all of this might well notice that some of these cues have timings that are noticeably different from those on the tour cue sheets. That's because the tours all ran on relatively modern touring dimmers (Avo or ETC), whereas on the Queens we were using their installed, much older Strand dimmers and however much we tried to make curves to compensate for this, in some cases the only solution was to amend the cue timing. As is so often the case there was a lot of "science" of trying to match things that was over-ridden by a simple dictum from David, that the stage should never go black, even momentarily, during a transition so that the show is always being driven forward rather than interrupted by the lighting. There are only, I think, two actual "no light" moments during the show, one of which is the setting up of the wedding. Originally in the transfer to the Queens it often felt as if the transitions were going through black because the dimmers did very little at the bottom end of their fades.
Not included in this printout are the various other versions of the show lighting held in the lighting desk ready to deal with other issues, such as failures of the turntable.
from comments by Rob Halliday
This was the transfer of the show from its original home at the Palace (which Andrew Lloyd Webber owned and wanted for his new musical The Woman In White) to the Queen's Theatre, which Cameron Mackintosh owns.
The Queen's is smaller than the Palace, so a new set was required; the one built for this was designed as a touring set since there was some feeling that the show would not have an extended life in the theatre. Ultimately it was given major boosts by the Susan Boyle rendition of "Dreamed a Dream" on the "Britain's Got Talent" tv show, and then by the Les Mis movie, so it kept on selling. Watching the show a couple of nights before it closed I realised that the side bridges (supporting the side light position and the side followspots)
actually still had their wheels on the bottom, ready to tour. The set was quite considerably smaller. This made it quite hard work to make the lighting work as it had, particularly in the positions where people vanished from site as they spun upstage on the revolve. They were sometimes just a little too close to truly vanish as they had previously. The rig also became a bit more concealed than it had been in earlier versions.
The rig was an expanded/updated version of the "tour" rig. StudioColors were replaced with VL2000 Washes. Many conventional gobo lights (including the "whirlpool" effect) were consolidated into a number of VL2000 Spots. Some of the DLCs became Pitching DLCs, opening up new options. Captions came from a VL3500 Spot, which added the ability to shift colour or zoom the captions at the danger that if the light failed you lost all of the captions, not just one. Additional VL3500 Spot overhead to do a giant whirlpool effect. Some VL500s on the perch as roving specials. Early use of LED lighting hidden away in the scenic portals in front of the proscenium arch.
Little changes were made to the rig during its run, mainly caused by Cameron Mackintosh refurbishing the theatre and deciding he didn't like intrusive lighting fixtures, so for example the FOH VSFX cloud projectors became, I think, the City Theatrical cloud effect. Quite late in the run I think the original Pani beam lights were replaced with a different kind of beam light, presumably because of spare parts availability.
Control originally from a Strand 520i, with control of the Light Curtains via DMX now integrated into the console. During the run this was replaced by an ETC Ion. Rig rented from White Light.
I've included the lighting plan, plus the moving light focus list and some samples of the moving light focus plot, which had now moved to digital photography. There's also a printout of the lighting console data from the ETC Ion, as at the closing performance. Anyone picking through all of this might well notice that some of these cues have timings that are noticeably different from those on the tour cue sheets. That's because the tours all ran on relatively modern touring dimmers (Avo or ETC), whereas on the Queens we were using their installed, much older Strand dimmers and however much we tried to make curves to compensate for this, in some cases the only solution was to amend the cue timing. As is so often the case there was a lot of "science" of trying to match things that was over-ridden by a simple dictum from David, that the stage should never go black, even momentarily, during a transition so that the show is always being driven forward rather than interrupted by the lighting. There are only, I think, two actual "no light" moments during the show, one of which is the setting up of the wedding. Originally in the transfer to the Queens it often felt as if the transitions were going through black because the dimmers did very little at the bottom end of their fades.
Not included in this printout are the various other versions of the show lighting held in the lighting desk ready to deal with other issues, such as failures of the turntable.
from comments by Rob Halliday
