More details from White Light (www.whitelight.ltd.uk):
Bruno Poet, the show’s lighting designer, has enjoyed a widely diverse career, encompassing everything from opera (including a long involvement with Garsington Opera) to plays (including the acclaimed Frankenstein at the National Theatre, for which he won both an Olivier Award and a Knight of Illumination award) to concerts such as the recent tour by Icelandic band Sigur Rós – for which he won another Knight of Illumination sword this year, in the Concert Touring category.
On From Here To Eternity he worked closely with director Tamara Harvey, choreographer Javier de Frutos, projection designer Jon Driscoll, and set designer Soutra Gilmour, who provided a standing set designed to “look like a bombed out theatre or drill hall,” as Poet explains. “Different scenes are suggested by very simple props or scenic elements, such as desks or venetian blinds for offices, metal beds and rows of coolie shades for barracks. Lighting builds on these simple elements.”
Describing the lighting, he notes that he was “very keen to have a mainly tungsten rig, partly for the beauty and because I love tungsten, and partly to keep the feel of the piece in the 1940s. The color palette is mainly shades of white – from Lee 204 through to Lee 200 – though one scene is notably pink and red, and there is a little 195 blue in there as well. The intention was for the lighting to be very directional and sculptural, but to never draw attention to itself. It was there to help tell the story.” He also wanted a rig that was as quiet as possible.
To achieve all of this, he turned to White Light not just because of the company’s diverse lighting rental stock, but also because of its willingness to invest in new equipment to allow him to realise his design on stage – particularly a new discharge source to complement the tungsten-based design. “I’ve been using the Vari-Lite VL1000AS for years,” he explains, “as it’s the only discharge moving spotlight that I’ve considered quiet enough to use in the theatre, and I’ve always loved its ability to zoom out to nearly seventy degrees. The problem is that the color mixing was always disappointing. For this show, with White Light’s help, I set out to find an alternative, through a big shoot-out where we compared all of the options.”
In the end, Poet chose the Martin Mac Viper range – the Viper Performance framing spotlight and the Viper Wash DX Washlight. “Though they’re not as quiet as the VL1000AS, they were way quieter than anything else I’ve tested, and in every other respect they are fantastic – amazing output, big zoom, great frost, great colors, accurate shuttering and relatively small given the output. I think this will be a workhorse on shows I do in the future. The Wash DX, with its internal barn doors and iris, is also a triumph – a bright, wide washlight that can become a tight special when it has to.”
White Light purchased Vipers for the show, with six Viper Performances providing crosslight from the top of the side ladders and four Viper Wash DX as backlights from upstage; the tungsten rig includes 18 Mac TW1s overhead, plus ETC Revolutions, 5k Fresnels with scrollers and a scroller Par crosslight all controlled by an ETC Eos during the tech and a Gio post-opening. The rig was completed by ChromaQ Color Force battens lighting the back wall, 24 Martin Atomic strobes, triggered by the sound department during the Pearl Harbour attack, plus two Robert Juliat Alex tungsten followspots at the sides of the auditorium.
White Light worked closely with Poet and his team – including Associate Lighting Designer Dave Sadler, Production Electricians Fraser Hall and Chris Vaughan, Programmer Warren Letton and all of the staff at the Shaftesbury Theatre plus Production Manager Patrick Molony – during the production and preview period. “White Light was fantastic, as ever,” Poet notes, “with the kit in great condition, and the twice daily deliveries to the West End allowing them to respond quickly to changes as new challenges were thrown up while we teched the show.”
Dave Isherwood, White Light’s Hire and Technical Director adds, “It was a delight working with Bruno, as it has been for the many years that we’ve been involved with Garsington Opera. The shoot-out we organized for him was just as informative for us – and we are very pleased that Bruno chose the Viper range, in which we are already heavily investing.”
From Here To Eternity is playing now at the Shaftesbury Theatre. The production joins the many other shows currently supplied by White Light, including the recently opened The Commitments, as well as Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Billy Elliot, The Bodyguard, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Matilda, Les Misérables, War Horse and many more.
