The latest trend in Broadway is to take a famous movie, either narrative or musical, and transform it into a lavish stage production. The most successful example of this is The Producers, adapted by comedic filmmaker Mel Brooks from his 1968 movie, in which washed-up Broadway producer Max Bialystock and his frustrated accountant Leo Bloom conjure a scheme to become rich by raising a lot of money, producing a flop, then running off to Rio with the remaining cash. Of course, the film and musical provide their own social commentary, as the duo's abominable play, Springtime For Hitler, satirizes the Third Reich. The insanity translates well to the stage, encompassing everything from dancing and singing stormtroopers to swaying city pigeons that give the Aryan salute. Live engineer David Gotwald has been mixing the show's sound from its month-long trial run in Chicago through all four years at its current home at the St. James Theatre on Broadway. He had a lot to tell FOH about working on this monster musical hit.
How much have you seen the show change over four years?
The material stays very much the same. Interpretations and performances are customized by whoever's doing them, particularly in the principal roles. Richard Kind is very different from Brad Oscar, who's very different from Nathan Lane. They all bring something unusual to it. It's not that one is better than the other. They're just different.
By this point you must have gone through a lot of different understudies. I'm assuming that you when you set levels for the show, you have to take into consideration all of the alternates?
Even with the principals, it changes day to day, particularly Max and Leo, who have really tough, vocal shows. Max screams his way through most of the show just because that's the way it's written. He really can't not be loud and bombastic. It just doesn't work from a character point of view, so come Sunday everybody's a little tired. It changes day to day. And in the orchestra of 28, I would say there are probably six or seven subs a night, so that's always different.
The Producers is not an overly loud show. You have a good balance between the different elements in the show, and you don't get your head blown off.
Part of that is a tribute to my being given a really great sound system by Steve Kennedy and John Shivers. In fact, it does get pretty loud from a sound pressure level. The quality is really good, and in the first few rows you are close enough that you get a lot of acoustic energy from the orchestra pit and the stage. So the speakers near the front rows are not turned up terribly loud. If you were back by me and the sound system were to turn off all of a sudden, you would be completely aware of how loud it actually is coming from the speakers. "Springtime For Hitler" is a very, very loud presentational number. The orchestra is very miked and the singers are very miked because it's a big theatrical piece, which is different from a number like "That Face," which is really a book number that's not so loud.
It's also a tribute to great orchestrations. In the old days before microphones, when the singers were singing, there was a flute and a bass and brushes. That was it. You had to hear the vocals, and there were no microphones, so their shows were orchestrated very, very carefully. Then when there was dancing, the whole orchestra played. This show is like that in that the orchestrations really don't get in the way of vocals when it's one person singing "That Face." They're very, very appropriate. Then when they dance, everybody plays and the band goes crazy, which is great because it makes it seem exciting and yet it means that the vocals don't have to be so screamingly loud from the speakers to get over four trumpets.
I could rant about how much I hate sound systems in Broadway musicals. It's odd that that's how I make my living. But I'm much more a fan of less amplification. I really think this trend started with the concept album musicals. First they made the rock 'n' roll record of Jesus Christ Superstar, and everybody heard it and went crazy. (I'm just going to say "they"–I'm not going to name names.) Then they decided to put it on the stage. So what's the first thing they do? They say it has to sound exactly like the record. This was a big concept rock record that was made in the studio, so now you transfer that to the Broadway stage, and everybody is expecting it to sound like what they heard on the record before they saw the show.
That's what's happening with a lot of shows now. People are used to hearing it in their homes with a nice stereo mix, and when they go to the theater they expect the same sound quality.
It's all backwards, because in the '40s and the '50s, you used to buy the recordings of the shows as a memento, like a souvenir program, so you could enjoy it when you got home afterwards. Now it's the reverse. You market the albums to sell the show, and so you expect the show to sound like the album.
What's the biggest challenge for you on this show?
Hats. Hats and sweat. It's a physically active show, particularly for Max and Leo, and they sweat a lot. Microphones are on their heads. It's a period show, so there are a lot of fedoras and hats with brims, and everybody's wearing a hat. That's like cupping your hands over your mouth. So it's a lot of careful EQ, a lot of careful mic placement, to do the best you can. It never sounds great. It never sounds like somebody standing at a mic and singing.
How many mics do you have on Max and Leo?
They each wear two. There's one point in the show where Leo has three on because there's one in his top hat when he does "I Wanna Be A Producer." He wears one on his head and one underneath his necktie because of the water bit. When Max throws the water in his face, we often lose his head mic at that point. The one that's under his tie because of the water doesn't really sound so great. It's really there just for emergencies.
They're onstage pretty much all the time. There's very little chance to get them off and change them. The best you can do is hit them with some compressed air and hope that that will dislodge the water from the capsule.
What kind of a board are you operating?
We have a Cadac J-Type with 82 slots and about 70 inputs. We're using the Cadac software, the early PC version, and we're using the older version because it actually has a MIDI sequencer built in. The console actually triggers the sound effects from a sampler by sending out MIDI notes. So I can hit "next" and the telephone will ring.
Do you use any processing?
One of the things I really like about working with Steve and John is that they don't believe in a lot of processing. We have a couple of EQs, one on the band and one for some vocal effects. Those are Lexicon PCM91s. It's an A/B system, so there are two completely discrete sound systems operating at all times, so that everywhere you see a speaker there are actually two. So when Max and Leo are doing a scene together, Max is coming out of one sound system and Leo is coming out of the other. That completely reduces the phase canceling that happens sometimes when people are standing right next to each other and talking.
What kinds of mics are you putting on the actors?
We're using MKE2s and Sennheiser transmitters and receivers. The processing? Very, very little. There's a graphic EQ on each of the A and B systems for the vocals, and then there is speaker processing that includes delay and the curbs for the EAW speakers.
How are you miking the orchestra?
It's kind of a mish-mash of stuff. The woodwinds have AKG 414s. The brass has Sennheiser 609 mics. A bunch of Neumanns on the percussion section, which by the way is up on the seventh floor, nowhere near the orchestra pit because of the real estate. The pit is really small, and it's a big percussion rig.
So they're above even the theater?
There's a stack of dressing rooms that goes up seven stories on the side. So up on floor number seven is a dressing room for the understudies and a room we call the "sky pit," which has the percussion and the harp in it. They have video of the conductor. They hear the full orchestra minus themselves in cans. Then the conductor has a little hotspot by his podium that has the percussion and the harp in it, so that he can really hear what they're doing.
Are there a couple of lines that are sampled from the movie that the actors lip sync to during "Springtime For Hitler"?
It's the Mel Brooks line, and it was done for this production. It's a little joke, Mel doing his line from the movie. He did it fresh for here because it had to be in our tempo.
During "Along Came Bialy," the number with the old ladies and their walkers, were those miked or was that just sound coming right off the stage?
There are five foot mics across the front, Crown PCC-160s, and we really just use them for the taps. We use them a little bit in the "I Want To Be A Producer" number. They're real walkers, but we've put metal chair glides on the bottom, so they smack around on the floor.
This is certainly a fast 'n' furious show.
It's really fun. It's been four years, and I'm still not tired of it. There are nights I come in and go, "Uhh, again," and then the show starts and before you know it, it's over. I enjoy my job tremendously. I've always been a huge fan of the Broadway musical, so I feel very, very fortunate to have been given this gift of this career. Every night I'm going through the stage door. I try to not ever lose sight of the fact that that was a dream of mine once, and now I do it every day. I feel very lucky. It's a huge hit show with really good songs and really funny jokes. That doesn't come along very often.
