The Tony Award-winning spectacle The Drowsy Chaperone features plenty of singing, dancing and vaudevillian sketches in the old school tradition, but it is also a funny sendup, and loving homage, of those conventions. Essentially the show takes place in the living room of a Broadway aficionado (Bob Martin) who tells the audience about how he likes to sit and listen to his favorite shows of yore, including The Drowsy Chaperone. As he plays the soundtrack on his turntable (remember those?), his living room is transformed into a Broadway stage (albeit with his furniture) as the 1920s story of a rich movie star whose impending marriage to a stranger (and its potentially disastrous consequences) plays out before him. During the show, which he is essentially recreating in his mind, our narrator watches and even interacts with the performance, even if the actors do not know he is there. Highly self-reflexive, The Drowsy Chaperone works because of its solid performances, humorous social commentary and numerous gags, including one scene where the record skips and the cast must sing a single line repeatedly. FOH engineer Daryl Kral, whose past credits include Dracula (as mixer), Gypsy, La Bohème, and Flower Drum Song (as submixer), is the man manning the boards for this tongue-in-cheek extravaganza. And he certainly has fun doing it.
The opening of the show is interesting. The music for the record starts, the sound moves from a mono record sound to a stereo orchestral mix. Is there any amplified sound in the very beginning of the show at all?
DARYL KRAL: Yeah, Bob Martin is miked the whole time. He's actually double-miked into two different inputs in the console. The input that we use in the beginning of the show is slightly panned house left to give the illusion as if he is coming from where he is sitting in his chair. Then once he steps over to center stage, there's a move on the console which puts him back to the center. But it's about mixing lightly enough so that in the dark your eyes automatically go to where he is sitting.
He stays at an extremely low volume while the record is playing, until the orchestra swell comes in. That's done on the SFX machines, which return to multiple inputs in the console. There is also a surround reverb, and it's a n o t h e r move in the console. Basically what we're taking from the record player is slowly surrounding the house with sound, and then it turns into a live orchestra.
Which console are you running?
It's an analog Cadac J-Type console. There's automation from scene to scene. It's just routing automation, not dynamic automation.
How many different mics do you have running?
There are 28 microphones on the actors. We use DPA 4061 mics on the actors with Sennheiser SK 5012 transmitters and Sennheiser EM 3532 receivers. We have a 38 slot and a 62 slot for a total of 90 inputs in the console. We use two Black-Ops computers for the Cadac automation and we use two shuttle computers that are running the SFX machines. We run those simultaneously with a switcher in-between. We use XTA DP200s for inserts of delay times for all of the characters on stage, and an XTA SIDD, which does all the tap microphones and the EQ for the monkey microphones, which are located within their hats.
There is one microphone down there on stage left. What is that used for?
That's a practical microphone. It's a Shure. That's picked up for a gag that we do with a cane, when one character repeatedly drops a cane into a microphone. I use that to give it a little more snap.
One funny gag involves the record player skipping, and the actors have to repeat certain actions. There are records scratches that are on the SFX machine that are their visual cues that happen with the action that's happening on stage. There is a Key2 effects return that comes in to the console, which does a lot of the record skips and stuff like that.
How many people are in the orchestra pit?
There's a drummer, a percussionist, three trumpets, two 'bones, four reeds, a guitar, bass and two pianos. There is a plethora of microphones there. There are a lot of DPA microphones, which were the designers' microphone of choice. They work well with brass. We use DPAs on the reeds and DPAs and AKG 414s on the percussion. We use a lot of Shure and Sennheiser microphones on the drum kit, BSS active DIs on the keys, and an RE20 in the kick drum.
How was the tap dancing miked?
They wear separate transmitters with microphones on their tap shoes. It just comes again to us in another input in the console. I mix it just like any other microphone. We use DPA 4061s.
This show really isn't that loud.
It's really not mixed soft to please an older audience because there are theatre people that like the show, because it's about theatre. Of course, Wednesday matinees you get the older audience, and it is older than something like Lion King, but the reason why we try to keep this show quiet, and then build in the big numbers, is so that you have the dynamic range within the show. It takes you on a journey of being quiet and intimate, then having that big Broadway feel, then as soon as the number's done, it's right back into the guy's living room. That's basically what the show's about. It's not full throttle the whole way, but there are numbers like "Toledo Surprise" and "Show Off," where you do have that big Broadway feel to them.
It seems like that was a very specific choice of the sound designers at Acme.
It's something that those guys strive for all the time, creating that illusion of us not being in a building. Nevin Steinberg, Mark Menard and Tom Clark make up the Acme Sound Partners design team, and for all the shows that I have worked with them, I have always enjoyed when a show gets intimate and is transparent to the ear. Obviously we need to supply sound to every seat in the house, but there are ways of doing that through design and using the line arrays and having a gentle hand when you're mixing to really create that illusion of transparency.
They're making fun of these old Broadway and vaudeville clichés, but they obviously have an affection and affinity for old-fashioned theatre.
That's true, and then to make fun of a show that they've made up is brilliant. All those characters are fictional. The Drowsy Chaperone is fictional. It's quite an interesting way of looking at it. I should also say that everyone in the Drowsy cast is top-notch talent, which makes this wonderful to mix night after night.
What speakers do you use on this show?
We use an LDS line array, which is the first time that I used it, which is also a difference between Dracula and this show. Basically there are speakers located 35 feet up on either side of the proscenium. It's a full line array broken up into four different sections on each side. It's one giant stack broken up four different times. It's all different size boxes.
Those two stacks evenly distribute the sound throughout the theatre, correct?
That also goes to what you were saying about getting it quiet throughout the house. With traditional speakers, it's louder in the front row than is in the 26th row, but the technology of line array has allowed me to spread sound evenly throughout the theatre. So we use LDS line array on the left and right of the proscenium, and we also have five L-ACOUSTICS Arc line array for a cluster along with five dV-DOSC, which sit on top of the arcs. The cluster supplies sound for the orchestra level. Then we have the dV-DOSC line array that supplies the sound for the mezzanine. That's supported by four MSL-2s doing band fill. We have EAW JF-50s, 60s, 80s and d&b E-3s that supply sound for under balcony and stalls delay and balcony delay. There's surround throughout both levels of the theatre. We have d&b subs that supply surround sub on both levels of the theatre, and we have UPA- 1P and 2Ps as our balcony fill.
Acme uses many different speakers for specific applications. We have d&b amplifiers, E-PAC's and P1200's, Lab.Gruppen amplifiers, fp2400Q's and fp6400Q's, Crest amplifiers, 2400's and 3600's and all XTA processing. We also used the Yahama 01V, which does all of the foldback monitoring onstage and pit monitoring. We also use an Aviom system, which offers headphone mixes for the drummer and the conductor. As far as dynamic processing, we use two dbx and a Gain Ryder to handle compression and two TC M3000's for principle and chorus verb. Three of the four engines in the TC 6000 handles surround verb, band verb and theatre verb that we use on everyone through out the show to "liven up" the theatre.
Peter and Richy Fitzgerald at Sound Associates have been wonderful in supporting the show's equipment needs
It's ironic that so much technology is used on a show that is looking back to a time when Broadway didn't have any of it.
Exactly. But that's also why we try to mix it quiet. It gets loud during those big numbers. "Toledo Surprise" is a loud number, but by that time you're so awed by what's going on and with the talent on stage that you're not thinking about speakers. It's definitely a fun ride to keep the theatre extremely quiet, where you're believing that there are no microphones at all, to slamming the audience and awing them with a big musical number.
