LONDON — The recent seven-performance run of Anna Nicole at the Royal Opera House (ROH) was a study in contrasts, with Miriam Buether’s sets and lighting by Mimi Jordan Sherin and DM Wood bringing lurid strip club visuals to the venerable stage.
The production, not surprisingly, called for some special additions to the ROH lighting stock, and its head of lighting, Nick Ware, brought in Stage Electrics to help select and supply the specials. They included a single strobe flash bright enough to white out the entire stage, a high power automated lighting fixture with framing capability and a club lighting effects fixture.
“When the commissioned piece was announced as the story of Anna Nicole Smith, we knew it would be quite a diversion for us as a lighting department, although we’ve worked a lot with Richard Jones and Mimi Jordan Sherin, so there was already a relationship there.
“For the Royal Opera House and The Royal Ballet, we have a very specific style of lighting, but this was more like a musical, which has challenges in its own right — the biggest of all for us being time. Staging a West End musical normally involves weeks and weeks of technical rehearsal, even continuing into previews, and we literally had days of rehearsal before seven performances.
“Richard’s and Mimi’s whole ethos was a very fast-moving show: in two and a half hours there’s about 280 lighting cues, and then part cues and sequences within those, and programming it all in the time available was a real challenge. As was the style of the show’s design compared the type of equipment that we have.”
A standout lighting cue was to be a massively bright flash that would “white out” a pink set. Mimi Jordan Sherin, Ware noted, suggested several fixtures to try out.
Stage Electrics sourced an 85kW Hungaroflash T-Light Pro strobe and demonstrated it to the ROH team. “We decided we’d purchase it, because I felt it’s a unique piece and it would be a good thing to have in our stock,” Ware said, “something that could also be quite interesting for other companies to use.”
Stage Electrics also arranged shootouts of luminaires required for Mimi Jordan Sherin’s favored low-angle lighting position in the orchestra stalls. “Mimi is always looking for very intense discharge sources, which our standard rig doesn’t contain,” Ware said. “We have a lot of HMI kit available, but we wanted more controllability. Ultimately we were looking for a large profile fixture, with high power and shuttering, and low noise; our audience has very high expectations including no equipment noise.”
The result of the shootouts, and a visit by Ware to the new Royal Shakespeare Theatre, also equipped by Stage Electrics, was a choice of Martin Professional 1500W MAC III fixtures with full framing capabilities, a new addition to Stage Electrics’ rental inventory that was rented for the show through the company’s London office.
“They did the job very well,” said Stage Electrics’ Mark Burnett, “as did some fixtures from a quite different part of Martin’s product range.”
For the scene set in a strip club, “we needed a classic, flashy disco lighting effect,” Ware noted. “So we went to the other extreme of Martin’s range, and the Wizard Extremes filled the brief fantastically. I found it quite funny that we had one of Martin’s latest, largest moving lights and one of their disco units, both in this newly commissioned opera.”
The fixtures have now joined the Hungaroflash units in the ROH’s lighting stock. “There’s a Christmas party coming up,” said Ware, “but more seriously, this show will get revived at some point, so they were worth purchasing for our general stock.”
“It was an unusual and exciting challenge,” said Burnett, “and we were very pleased to be a part of this exceptional project.”
For more information, please visit www.stage-electrics.co.uk.
Photo by The Royal Opera / Bill Cooper
