A revival of Bob Fosse's 1966 musical, which he later adapted into a movie, Sweet Charity follows the misadventures of dance hall hostess Charity Hope Valentine as she hopelessly searches for the right man to help her escape her life of misery–and a chance meeting with a shy, awkward accountant named Oscar may be her chance for happiness. Yeah, it's definitely dated in its concept, but headliner Christina Applegate proves that she is far more talented than many would give her credit for as she sings and dances her heart out and makes Charity her own, while the show itself offers the razzle-dazzle that choreographer Fosse was known for. This modern production features some fantastic sets, costumes and music, particularly one groovy club sequence drenched in purple ("Rich Man's Frug") that shirks lyrics and is all about the dance. Sound designer Peter Hylenski gave FOH the inside scoop on working on this vintage 1960s musical, and how this revival is quite different from other big budget productions today.
Broadway musicals today tend to fill up scenes with background sound during non-musical moments, but Sweet Charity doesn't.
Peter Hylenski: That was a stylized choice that we had discussed in meetings. Did we want to bed sound effects underneath everything? Did we want to do introductory sound effects? It was really a decision by Walter Bobbie, the director, and myself that we would try to stay away from that in this particular production, just because of the stylized nature of it; instead, we'd focus in on the words and the music.
The vocabulary of the sound effects of the show really became more about if it needed to be there to motivate an action. The splash of her falling into the lake and the elevator effects–things like that needed to be more realistic and focus in on the action. But we tried to stay away from atmospheres and that sort of thing. This is a very light show. There are only six sound effect moments, really. The only real construction was coming up with the elevator; the movement of the elevator and how that worked. Those are multi-part cues, but we didn't really focus on the sound effects as much because there were not that many.
Christina has at least two mics on her, correct?
She wears two complete rigs, and those rigs actually are completely independent all the way up through the subgroup of the console. So she has two independent channels, two independent microphones, transmitters, cables–the whole thing. It's a full backup scheme that allows us to have her completely redundant, and it also gives us an opportunity to have two different mic positions for moments like "If My Friends Could See Me Now," when she's got the top hat on.
That was a really tricky moment to deal with. She's putting that top hat on and off, and we toyed around with rebuilding top hats and getting down to the wire frame and then using acoustically transparent materials. We thought about putting a mic into the hat, but it's on and off her head so many times in the middle of words and sentences that you really couldn't really swap between a hat mic and a head mic.
How did you meet that challenge?
We just ended up putting her ear rig, which is sometimes in a standard position on different characters in the show, further down on her face because the top hat does come down so far. When she puts it on, it's pretty much up to the top of her ear where her rig would normally be, so we really had to bring the mic even further down. It was a bit of a challenge trying to make it the most effective solution to a problem that is never going to be the same every day. She puts the hat on differently every day. The reflections are a little different every day.
Did you mute the other mic on her forehead for that number?
It gets completely turned off, and we switch to the ear rig for that entire number. Are any ambient mics on stage picking anything up, just in case? No. Everybody wears the radio, and that's it. The level of the show on stage is variable, so we can adjust the stage fallback levels, but during most of the bigger numbers the level onstage is loud enough that it would be pretty difficult to pick up most of this with an ambient mic.
So you only have one mic for her during "If My Friends Could See Me Now"?
Yes, and we have had her mic go down during that number. It becomes a very tricky, painful experience for those three minutes, but usually she's running with two independent mics. They both come to the desk, and the operator has the ability to swap between the two given any circumstance. But it's very rare that you find her mic-less. Everybody else has at least one microphone and some have multiples.
You're running a Cadac J-Type board with 73 inputs and are using mostly DPA 4061 mics with Sennheiser transmitters. What about processing?
There's a rack of processing. Again, the approach of the show from a sound perspective was trying to get back to its roots–the warmth of the 1960s and the vintage-ness of the show, I guess. I'm a big fan of vintage sound equipment and tube gear. So we have some Valvotronics tube compressors, Summit DCL-200s, TC Electronic reverb, some gates and compressors for toms and stuff during the drumming sequence. Some old standby dbx 160s on there.
Most of the band processing was done through that gear. It's a very percussion and drum-heavy show because of the style of the choreography. Wayne Cilento, the choreographer, is very into percussive dance arrangements, as was Bob Fosse, of course. So coming into the project, I thought of it in terms of how we were going to deal with moments in the show where you have an 18-piece band playing full-out, and then the whole band drops except for the drums and the percussion. You need to maintain the same impact and the same dynamic without letting the whole bottom fall out because the drums have so much importance, and it's not just about keeping the time. It really is the driving energy of a lot of these numbers. The drum chain and the drum mix in the show are pretty significant. So the Summit compressor is actually doing a stereo drum compression chain, à la the old studio trick of taking the subgroup of drums, sending it back through a compressor, bringing that back into the console and being able to mix that compressed drum sound with the non-compressed sounds, to give some extra body to the sounds of the drums and really fill them out.
How were the marching band drummers miked during the sequence where they play rudiments simultaneously? Was it live or sampled sound?
We run their mics up so we can hear the actual drumsticks hitting the deck and the floor. They aren't triggering anything. During that sequence, the drummer and percussionist are both playing, and then there is also a sweetened drum track underneath it. We took the drummer into a studio and got some different marching snares and marching toms, different cymbals and different bass drums, and laid down tracks just to fill it out. We tried it without, and having the sound of a single snare drum just didn't have the energy that we were looking for. And the idea of a marching snare drum line of nine guys playing exactly the same rudiment at exactly the same time gives you that different energy and different feel.
How big is the orchestra and how many percussionists are there?
The orchestra is 18 people, and there's one drummer and one percussionist, who's actually not in the pit but in a dressing room on the second floor of the theater. We've converted it into a sound-isolated percussion room. You walk in the door and it's absolutely full of percussion–timpani, mallet instruments, congas, bongos, lots of hand toys. He's got a video and audio links to the stage and to the musical director so he can play along with what's happening in the pit.
There's a fantastic group of people playing in the pit. Lots of studio quality microphones–lots of Neumanns, Sennheisers, some Neumann tube stuff. We're really just trying to capture that energy and deliver it to the audience. To keep that full, rich, warm sound, like that warm brass sound in the signature "Big Spender" moment right at the top of the show. It was a lot of fun putting that together, and I love the music, so that made it all the more enjoyable.
