Urinetown is a satirical comedy musical set in a fictive city under the spell of a dangerously long drought, to which the government reacts by strictly banning the use of private lavatories. Reputed local theatre production company, Pangdemonium, staged the musical at the Drama Centre Theatre, located inside the Singapore National Library Building. Ctrl Fre@k was chosen to create the sonic experience for the audience and it selected the Yamaha Rivage PM10 digital mixing system for managing audio duties.
Jeffrey Yue, Ctrl Fre@k’s co-owner and sound designer/engineer, said: “When bringing a full-scale two-and-a-half hours musical with a large cast and an orchestra to a stage, we usually require a more sophisticated mixing solution than what most house consoles adequate for other types of shows can offer. I have used the Rivage PM10 in the past for rock musicals, so I was very curious how it would work with neo-classical material such as Urinetown.”
Regarding the setting up process for the show, Yue said: “Different from Broadway or West End, where crews have several weeks for load-in and setup, in Singapore we have typically just very few days, mainly due to the tight booking schedules of venues and budget restraints. Actually, for Urinetown we had only just over two days for setup, followed by two to three days of rehearsals. Thankfully, we have virtual soundcheck. Recording everyone, musicians and cast, then returning and continuing to work on the same console – it’s a life-saver.”
He continued: “The layout of the Rivage PM10 surface is also very helpful for an efficient workflow. As opposed to other consoles, with the Rivage PM10 I can work on the left bay while my colleague Lee Yew Jin, who mixes the shows, works on the centre and right bays, without interference or even ‘elbow fights’.”
The Rivage PM10 also helped out with regards to the total number of inputs that had to be accounted for. Yue detailed: “It was 17 cast members, all on radio microphones, a six-piece orchestra including percussion, playback sound effects, and effect returns such as from my external reverb in addition to the ones inside the console, all in all over 90 channels. The PM10 allows such high channel count, a lot of automation and processing, plus it fulfils my requirement to run everything at 96kHz all the way to the amplifiers.”
Regarding output configuration, Yue said: “First, the Rivage PM10 allows us to split all input channels, so each microphone channel got split in two with one going to FoH and one to monitors, each with completely separate processing. The orchestra used in-ear monitoring systems, and so did our engineer in the pit who looked after the musicians. In total we were using 22 matrix outputs, and then the outputs for loudspeakers from the Drama Centre Theatre’s inventory for on- and off-stage monitoring purposes like providing cast with audio from distant singers, or cues which they might otherwise not have heard. In addition to the front of house PA, for correct localisation we were as well using spot and effects loudspeakers on stage and upstage.”
Yue also commented on the overall complexity of the project: “We are constantly pushing ourselves to work both ‘well’ and ‘accurately’, and to get the balance in between right. Urinetown is a complex production, quite high in my ranking of demand. We were running around 120 scenes. Few cues were sync’d and running automatically, but we triggered everything manually, including the majority of sound effects. We used lots of DCAs, lots of automation, and the Rivage PM10 did it all well and reliably.”
He concluded: “Mixing a musical is vastly different from mixing a band at a concert. It’s like flying a helicopter without an autopilot, whereby one must hold on to the controls. It requires constant ‘line-chasing’ and mixing even during dialogues as the use of multiple microphones leads to phase cancellation.”