Season’s Greetings - and A Sense of Theatre

Season’s Greetings to all….

And a last minute reminder that A Sense of Theatre, Richard Pilbrow’s wonderful new book about the history of the National Theatre, with which Rob has been involved for the last eight years and is now working to bring to the world after Richard’s sad and untimely passing earlier this month, is available for pre-order for just a few more hours on Kickstarter.

If you’d like to buy the book, or even better if you’d like to actually be part of the book with your name inside it, you have until 11.59pm TODAY, 26th December 2023, to sign up.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/asot/a-sense-of-theatre

Presenting: Classic Gear Live, September 3-5th, Kensington Olympia, London

For the last sixteen years, Rob has been writing about the products that have shaped the entertainment industry - lighting, sound and more - in his monthly Classic Gear column for LSi magazine.

This year, Classic Gear is jumping off the page and into real life with Classic Gear Live, part of the PLASA Show which takes place this weekend (Sun 3-Tues 5 Sept) at Kensington Olympia in London.

The stand will feature some remarkable products, loosely themed around big anniversaries. There will be the pioneering, still remarkable Vari-Lite Artisan console and VL2 and VL4 moving lights from the mid-1980s. The first ever Cadac mixing console made for theatre from 1983. CCT’s Silhouette spotlights, which became the standard spotlights for a generation from 1973 onwards. Strand’s MMS memory console, launched in 1973, and their Patt 263 and Patt 264 spotlights (from 1963) and the lantern that is perhaps the ‘classic of classics’, the Patt 23, from 1953.

Alongside this will be audio equipment from some of the defining artists of the 1960s and 1970s, including th PA system used on Pink Floyd’s 1973 Dark Side of the Moon tour.

And because equipment is nothing without people, there will also be chances to meet and talk to the people who designed, made, sold, used or now preserve these remarkable products, including lighting designer and programmer Andrew Voller re-united with an Artisan console for the first time in twenty years, Dik Welland talking about looking after the Vari-Lite products over the years, Alan Luxford and John Wright talking about Strand’s products and history, Don Hindle talking about CCT Lighting and its Silhouette range, Mike Walker talking about the designing the sound for shows using Cadac mixing desks, plus Jon Primrose from the Theatrecrafts website, Paul Johnson from the Historic Stage Lighting Collective and Chris Hewitt from CH Vintage Audio.

It promises to be quite an event, quite a chance to hear the stories, to reminisce, to discover, or re-discover according to your age, these products whose influence is still felt today.

Classic Gear Live: [link]
Products On Show: [link]

Back and now in London: Crazy For You

After it’s smash hit, sold out season in Chichester last summer., the wonderful musical Crazy For You, is now playing at London’s Gillian Lynne Theatre, for a season that runs into 2024.

The show continues the long-standing collaboration with lighting designer Ken Billington, that stretches all the way back to the original London production of Chicago and concluded the remote lighting of the musical Waitress in Japan during lockdown. It also sees Rob working once again with director/choreographer Susan Stroman, with whom he first worked on the National Theatre’s Oklahoma!, in London in 1999 and New York a couple of years later.

Also on the lighting team are associate lighting designer Dale Driscoll, assistant lighting designer Lucy Adams, production electrician Gerry Amies and his team, and the electrics team at the Gillian Lynne, with the rig suppled by PRG.

Crazy For You is previewing now, opening on Monday July 3rd.

Crazy For You [link]

Playing Now: Glory Ride

The new musical Glory Ride opened at London’s Charing Cross Theatre on April 28th.

Written by Todd Buchholz and Victoria Buchholz, directed and choreographed by Olivier-award winner Kelly Devine (Come From Away), designed by PJ McEvoy with lighting by Rob and performed by a wonderful cast, the show tells the true story of Italian Tour de France winner Gino Bartali and how he used his celebrity status to help rescue Jewish children from Italy during the second world war.

The show opened to great acclaim for all involved, and runs until July 29th - book your tickets now!

Glory Ride [link]
Photographer: Marc Brenner

Actors And Orchestra Together - EGBDF in Mumbai

Rob has just completed a short trip to Mumbai - his first visit to India - to work on the rarely-staged Tom Stoppard play Every Good Boy Deserves Favour. The show is rarely stage because it involves not just actors but a full orchestra performing the music written by André Previn - but here the forces of Mumbai’s National Centre for the Perfoming Arts and the Symphony Orchestra of India combined to bring the show to life.

Rob was once again working as associate lighting designer and lighting programmer with lighting designer Rick Fisher, with whom he has previously collaborated on projects around the world, with the pair both enjoying the re-union with the NCPA’s Head of Theatre and Film Bruce Guthrie, for whom they have both lit shows before. Alongside them were set designer Francis O’Connor, costume designer Pallavi Patel, sound designer Andy Collins, movement director Rachel D’Souza, music supervisor Matthew Scott and conductor Mikel Toms.

Rick and Rob received excellent support from the Mumbai-based assistant on the show, Akshay Khubchandani, who ensured everything required was available, up and working in the theatre as well as providing a wonderful host to this remarkable city.

As well as getting the show itself on, all involved took part in a workshop organised by the NCPA and stage manager Antonia Collins to introduce young people to the work required to get a show on - an event rapturously well received by those who attended it.

Such is the show’s success that it’s originally scheduled run has been extended by a week to give more people the chance to enjoy it.

Every Good Boy Deserves Favour Mumbai: [link]

Tree of Codes - Heading To Singapore

Rob is currently en-route to Singapore, for the next appearance of the acclaimed dance show Tree of Codes.

The show will play at the Esplanade Theatre on October 14th and 15th, as part of the da : ns festival 2022.

Tree of Codes Singapore: [link]
Gallery: [link]

Open - Finally! Carnival Magic

Rob is delighted to be able to announce that the big project he was occupied with - but couldn’t talk about - through much of 2019 and into 2020 before Covid came along and forced production to shut down, is now finally open, up and running: CARNIVAL MAGIC in Phuket, Thailand.

Billed as the ‘crowning jewel in night-time entertainment on the island of Phuket’ and describing itself as ‘the world’s first Thai carnival theme park’, the project is centred around a spectacular carnival show staged in a newly built theatre designed just for this shows, with an enormous, 70metre wide proscenium which then has massive wing spaces on either sides to house the enormous floats, some themselves almost 70m wide, which for the basis of the show.

Working alongside lighting designer John A Williams, Rob filled many roles on this production including ultimately programming the lighting for the rig of more than three hundred moving lights from Robe, Martin, GLP and others, including, for the technically minded, a remarkable 70m run of GLP X4-Bars as footlights. The show continues the relationship both have with the show’s producer Kittikorn Kewkacha from his earlier show, Phuket Fantasea, which is also now up and running again post-Covid, continuing a run that now extends to twenty-two years.

Carnival Magic is running now in Phuket, Thailand, with performances on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Saturdays and Sundays, alongside Phuket Fantasea which performs on Mondays and Fridays.

Carnival Magic: [link]

It's BACK - Tree of Codes, now in Helsinki

After a three-year Covid-enforced break, the acclaimed dance show Tree of Codes, which Rob created alongside choreographer Wayne McGregor, visual artist Olafur Eliasson and composer Jamie xx, is BACK!

The show is playing at the brand new Tanssin Talo - Dance House - in Helsinki, as part of the 2022 Helsinki Festival, with performance dates from August 12th-14th.

This is the first time the show has been seen since it’s run in Paris in mid-2019 - but now it is up and running again it will also be appearing in Singapore this autumn. Look out for it there.

As always, Rob is delighted and honoured to be part of this remarkable show, first created at the Manchester Festival in 2015, and delighted to be back amongst the wonderful team of people who get it up and running each time.

Tree of Codes Gallery: [link]
Helsinki Festival: [link]