Jeffrey “Jj” Hillman has a tough job. He mixes audio for a show full of stunning hotties who just happen to spend much of the show topless. Sounds cool, right? But it is not what it appears. “I just came off a 60 hour week,” he says. “Nice paycheck but…” That “not what it appears” applies to pretty much everything about this show.
Skin It Back
This is Las Vegas. There is no shortage of places to go to look at half-naked women, and burlesque-style shows are a long tradition. In the past few years, there has been a general “sexing up” of the city and there are topless revues in many of the properties on the Strip (pun not intended…). But Peep Show shares more with Broadway than with the local gentleman’s club. The current cast includes performers from both Tarzan and Wicked. The overall production values are insane, and the audio was designed by ACME Sound Partners, which has done half of the shows currently on the Great White Way, and the audio system (designed by Mark Menard and assistant Nick Borisjuk) is a high-ticket, zoned theater-style system. It requires most of the horsepower in the FOH Yamaha PM1D, and there are hundreds of cues to deal with in a 90 minute show.
The rest of the system consists of two hangs of Meyer Mica line array cabinets being run by a Meyer Galileo system and XTA processors running and Yamaha and Crown amps powering everything from front fills to surrounds and under-balcony fills. The theater is set up with two levels of regular seating and—in classic Vegas showroom style—VIP table seating on the floor. Given the kind of show this is, there are three runways extending into the floor area and the tables are between those runways. These are VIP seats, boys and girls, which means big bucks, so the fill system is extensive.
An LCS Matrix 3 system running Wild Tracks is used for sound effects, some tracks and click for the band (which got a whole bunch more interesting as time passed, so keep readin’…). Monitors are run by Jacob Smith on a PM5D.
“To be honest,” Jj says, “he is doing a lot more work back here than I am out front. The way that they broke down the monitoring zones as far as where the cast is throughout the song. They may start at the bandstand (an enclosed platform about 30 feet above the back-center stage right between the two main elevators), continue down the elevators and end up downstage. Jacob is taking separate cues to move their monitors along with them from zone to zone to zone.”
“That was the intent of the designers” says system tech Adam Loesch. “It is as much about muting speakers in areas that are not in use as it is about keeping the cast happy.” Wouldn’t it have been easier to just put everyone on personal monitors? “I believe that was a budget consideration,” says Adam. And one that makes sense. Peep Show has a large cast. Some 20 dancers plus a male lead vocal and two female singers plus Bo and the Diva. So call it 25 people at a minimum of two grand per including custom ear molds. That is $50,000 plus the headaches that come with that much wireless. Currently only the Diva and male lead vocal are on personal monitors.
And, this is a Broadway style very zoned system. “If you go look at the FOH board, the band, track and vocal mixes are different for each zone,” says Jj. “And we are using all 24 matrix outputs,” Adam adds. The system designers, they both report, spent the entire two weeks of previews sitting in the audience with wireless tablets controlling both the AudioCore and PM1D Manager tweaking mix to matrix levels and actual zone levels. “Two weeks night after night after night just to make sure that the imaging was right in every seating area.”
From the Beginning
Installing the system presented its own challenges. Even once Jj, Adam, Jacob and others finished putting in the mixed Meyer/EAW system, there was work left to do. With four HP700 subs flown, parts of the show needed more thump. So after the array was installed and scrimmed, they decided to add a pair of 605Ps beneath them where they could take advantage of the ground coupling. One issue—there really was not enough clearance to get them in without pulling down the array. And there was no time for that.
Jj and Adam pulled the scrim away from the cavity that holds the Micas and the 650s and show how tight the fit is. There is a structural piece between the two, and looking at it, you would never think that the 650s could be installed without pulling the Micas. “We got a lift in here and got the 650 up onto the lift railing and then pushed back on the Micas and had just enough room to squeak the 650s in,” says Jj. Adam measured it and they had about one inch of clearance to work with. It makes for a fun afternoon.
The original plan called for a month of 40-hour weeks to install audio, but when the audio crew arrived and saw that the seating areas were not finished and the stage (which is three feet higher than what was in the room before) was still being worked on, it immediately went to two weeks, seven days a week and 12 to 14 hour days to get it done. And it was not just hanging speakers. “There was existing wiring, but it was not what we needed for this design, so we were in the ceiling above the restrooms tracing conduit and fox-and-hounding wiring and resplicing wiring. There was no cable run to the under balcony, so that now comes straight from up land through a ventilation shaft to the catwalk and from the catwalk over beams in the ceiling, dropping down near an exit door. There were a lot of changes to what was originally in the room.”
Roll With the Changes
And the changes continue. The show is actually ingeniously designed, not only from the production side, but the marketing side as well. The story line (and, yes, there is one. I mean, would I go to a show that was just about naked breasts? Please…) has “little miss innocent can’t find love” (Bo) falling asleep alone in her apartment and falling (literally, dropped from the grid) into a dream where the “Peep Show Diva” leads her through a series of set pieces/fantasies loosely based on nursery rhymes. When the show opened, former Spice Girl Mel B had the role of Diva and Kelly Monaco (who my wife tells me was on Dancing With the Stars) as “Bo.” But because it is really about the production, the stars are interchangeable. Just before we went to press, the first of what will likely be regular changes went down with Wicked’s Soshonna Bean taking the Diva slot and Girl Next Door Holly Madison stepped into Bo’s stilettos. With a world-class singer now in the Diva role, they shed one backup singer, and the tightness of the bandstand was a big part of a decision to go from five live musicians to just live keys and drums with bass, guitar and reeds being transferred to tracks and the show re-cued in the space of a week. In a city that re-invents itself on a regular basis to keep the tourists coming in, change is about the only thing you can count on.
GEAR
Consoles: Yamaha PM1D (FOH, MON)
Reverb: TC Electronic M3000s (2)
Effects: Akai S6000
Speakers: Meyer Sound MICAs (11 per side)
Meyer Sound CQs (6/center cluster, 4/balcony delay)
EAW UB 12 speakers (14/under balcony)
EAW JF60s (30/surrounds)
Meyer Sound UPMs (8/frontfills)
Meyer Sound MM4s (12/runway fills)
Meyer Sound UPAs (Onstage monitoring)
Meyer Sound UP Juniors (Onstage monitoring)
EAW JF-80s
Amps: Crown Macro-Tech, Yamaha m5000
Processing: Galileo (for the MICAs)
XTAs (all other systems)
Playback: LSC Wildtracks
Mics: Sennheiser (wireless and PMs)
Neumann Kms-105s (Mic capsules)
