Crazy For You - Previewing Now

Rob is delighted to have spent the last couple of weeks in Chichester, programming the lighting for their summer musical, Crazy For You.

The show marks a welcome return to in-person collaboration with lighting designer Ken Billington. The last time Rob worked with Ken, one of them was in London, the other was in New York and the production was in a different country altogether, the Japanese production of Waitress lit entirely remotely because of Coronavirus travel restrictions.

This time Ken, Rob and associate lighting designer Dale Driscoll, along with everyone else, have been together the same place, very well looked after by the wonderful Chichester crew and all revelling in the work of director-choreographer Susan Stroman, with whom Rob last worked on the National Theatre’s acclaimed production of Oklahoma! in London and New York.

Crazy For You is previewing now, with its press night on July 19th.

Crazy For You: [link]

Les Mis Reinvented

Rob and all involved are thrilled by the reaction to their new production of Les Misérables, and delighted to have been able to bring the show a whole new fresh, contemporary, dangerous look and feel, lifting it out of its traditional setting and landing it in a timeless, nameless place - a dark dystopian society that could be anywhere.

Credit is due to all involved with the show at Mountview, particularly production manager Davin Patrick, stage manager Natasha Guzel, DSM Anna Matthiesen, production electrician Billy Highfield, programmers/assistant lighting designers Alex Hannah and Tristan Teresczuk and all of the rest of the lighting team. They did excellent work on the most challenging of shows to the tightest of schedules. The result was a wonderful piece of theatre, and a fitting opening for Mountview’s Mack theatre.

Pictures: [link]

More Pictures: [link] [link]

Les Mis at WhatsOnStage: [link]

Reactions on Twitter: [link]

Photo: Marc Brenner

Drury Lane Reborn

Rob spent eighteen months stalking the spectacular, £60million refurbishment of the Theatre Royal Drury Lane so that he could tell the story of the spectacular re-birth of this remarkable theatre.

The story is out now, in this month’s edition of LSi magazine. You can read it online here: [link]

A Les Mis For Right Now

Rob is delighted to be part of the all-new production of Les Misérables, being staged by Mountview as the official opening show of their new theatre, which is to be named The Mack in honour of Cameron Mackintosh who has supported it financially.

Rob has been involved with Les Mis from the time of the show’s tenth anniversary concert at the Royal Albert Hall and on through productions in London, touring the UK, in Australia, Belgium and New York. His summary of the history of the lighting of that remarkable production can be found at The Lighting Archive: [link].

However almost exactly none of the knowledge of that production is relevant to this one, which is being re-invented from the ground up in a contemporary setting by directors Matt Ryan and Shiv Rabheru and designer Lee Newby with lighting by Rob. It promises to be quite something, a thrilling evening of theatre even to those who think they know the show well.

Les Misérables plays at The Mack at Mountview in Peckham from November 1-6th.

More details here: [link].

Death Drop Takes To The Road

Death Drop, one of the shows which played in London during the various early stages of unlocking last year and earlier this year, has now hit the road so that all of the UK can enjoy this unique drag murder mystery…

Rob was delighted to work once again with lighting designer Jack Weir, re-creating and programming the show lighting for him at the first stop on the tour in Southend with a compressed version of the set, then programming at the second stop in Salford as the show stepped back up to its full design.

The show is now making its way around the UK. Full details can be found here: [link].

Back In A Theatre - For Real!

In complete contrast to some recent projects - Rob is delighted to be back in a real theatre with the real performers and the real lights, getting the UK tour of the musical Waitress up and running.

This is the production that Rob worked on remotely in Japan back in January with lighting designer Ken Billington and associate lighting designer Aaron Porter. It was interesting to load the show into the desk and see what things actually looked like - which, as it turned out, were pretty good!

With Ken Billington in New York re-opening the Broadway production of the show, the relight here was carried out by Aaron Porter, with regular note-swapping across the Atlantic so that changes being made to the show in New York could be incorporated into the tour here.

All of this was ably supported by production electrician Chris Vaughan and the touring lighting team of Ben Webster, Thomas Pritchard and Robin Potter.

Waitress launched its tour at the New Wimbledon Theatre, and is now making its way around the country.

Watiress: [link]

Long Range Lighting, Again...

A year on from re-creating Billy Elliot in Japan remotely, five months on from programming Waitress in Japan remotely, Rob is remote-re-lighting and remote-programming again - this time for Billy Elliot in Korea.

Remote lighting plans were put in place for this production at a point when travel into Seoul from the UK was not allowed. Even as that became possible (with two week quarantining), Rob decided to continue to work remotely because of the uncertainty surrounding international travel. Lovely as Seoul is, it would be unfortunate to be there and have the rules change so you weren’t allowed home…

The remote working system Rob has designed is a refinement from that used for Waitress, with two video feeds offering the best balance between image quality and low latency, and then a working set-up that includes a large monitor for stage view, and an Eos Ti console connected to the Korean console via theBRIDGE networking system. Considerable care was taken with camera specification and, particularly, colour camera set-up to give the best possible representation of the stage to those working from afar. As before the only drawback is a crazy work schedule: a Korean working day maps to a 1am-2pm day in the UK.

The other different this time is that the lighting designer, Rick Fisher, will get to be in the theatre once he is allowed out of quarantine - so there will be ‘eyes in the room’ and so an ability to make real, useful comparisons between the on-stage image and the on-camera image.

Technical rehearsals for Billy Elliot in Korea begin today; the show previews from August 31st, and opens on September 5th.

Remote Lighting at Virtual Showlight 2021: [link]

Back In The West End!

Six months since the last attempt at getting shows open again, Rob has been back in London’s West End, helping get shows open again - in this case programming for lighting designer Jack Weir on Death Drop at the Garrick Theatre, which re-opened on Wednesday night.

In a theatre? With a cast? And a creative team? And then - an audience?! It’s a bit like normality is returning!

Death Drop: [link]