Invoking Retro Sound Vibes on Broadway
The idea of a musical chronicling the disintegration of a marriage between two alcoholics does not sound like the most uplifting Broadway prospect. But in Days of Wine and Roses, Kelli O’Hara and Brian d’Arcy James have done a solid job of imbuing the right balance of pathos and humor into their intense onstage portrayals. Inspired by the 1958 J.P. Miller television play and Blake Edwards’ Oscar-winning subsequent film adaptation in 1962, the new Broadway version focuses on a hard-drinking public relations executive who marries a teetotaling secretary and unfortunately introduces her to booze. Their dual bingeing ultimately affects their marriage and the raising of their young daughter. The show’s stars received a standing ovation at the performance I attended at New York’s Studio 54 theater.
With a book by Craig Lucas and music and lyrics by Adam Guettel, Days of Wine and Roses is an unusual musical beyond the intense subject matter. A majority of the dialog is actually sung-through, which means there’s very little rhyming in the songs throughout the show. It does not follow conventional musical theater protocol.
The Sound Design
Tony Award-winning sound designer Kai Harada captured the sounds of the cast and orchestra and made it sound like an old school musical. In other words, there’s not a lot of strong sound reinforcement in the show. For this period piece, it feels like a natural choice.
“It’s not about the period that the show represents, it’s about the style of the composition,” Harada explains. “I think the best way to think about the show is that it is almost more ‘chamber opera’ than musical. I appreciate that [composer] Adam [Guettel] has written such a beautiful piece, and we both wanted the show to sound very, very natural. He and I both agree that it’s okay to ask an audience to lean in and really listen every once in a while.”
Like big musical productions on Broadway these days, Days of Wine and Roses features bouyant vocal performances and swelling orchestral moments, but it also offers more intimate singing and ambient washes of sounds from chimes and cymbals during a couple of numbers. It’s a dynamically rich show with the right level of mixing and without excessive volume.
“I think it’s safe to say that this is the show where we manipulate the orchestra the least,” Harada observes. “Adam is very specific about what he wants to hear, and Kimberly [Grisby] is an amazing music director who can get the full range of dynamics from the orchestra. Working together with Douglas [Graves], our mixer, we make sure those dynamics are natural, not from the sound system.”
Both Harada and Guettel wanted the show to sound as acoustic as possible, and they discussed this audio approach at great length during the show’s gestation. As Harada stated about both the current Broadway production at Studio 54 and the earlier off-Broadway incarnation at the Atlantic Theater, which had a 10-week run in 2023, there are times where they are mixing in a different style from typical musical theater moments.
“We’re truly letting the orchestra do most of their own dynamics, and only occasionally helping them out,” Harada explains. “Both Ben Steinhauer, who mixed the show off-Broadway, and Douglas Graves, who is mixing the Broadway show, have done fabulously adapting to the style of show we’re creating. It’s okay to have the audience lean in sometimes.”
Another challenge for Harada and his team was weaving soundscape and sound effects textures included within transitions or behind active scenes, but also subtly integrating them to work within the orchestration. He and associate sound designer Owen Meadows “worked diligently to create the appropriate sounds,” — a challenge, given that the show has approximately 24 scenes and nearly every transition involves a sound moment, which Harada notes is unusual for a musical. He and Rigby really wanted the show to sound acoustic, which was easier to achieve in the smaller downtown space.
“The Atlantic Theater is in an old church with a pitched roof, so the orchestra platforms ended up right under the roof, which acted as acoustic reflector panels,” Harada says. “At Studio 54, we just had open space above the orchestra platforms, and I think we had a better time getting a pure sound from the orchestra without the roof. All instruments now have space to breathe and speak properly.”
Harada notes that monitoring between the two orchestra platforms in the wings at Studio 54 was a concern, but he and Grigsby worked hard “to get as close to a classical, almost unamplified system,” he recalls. “We have one Meyer Sound Ultra-X40 over each platform. Each Ultra-X40 is fed the opposite side instruments in an attempt to facilitate ensemble playing. There are no Avioms or personal mixers, no headphones — nothing. Kimberly listens to the voices of the performers from her perch on the stage right platform acoustically, and she can also hear the slightest difference in sound quality coming back to her from the house. For the main P.A., I tried to preserve, within reason, a sonic picture that mimics the positioning of the instruments. So there is some significant panning on the orchestra as the audience hears it as well.”
Members in the pit include the musical director along with piano, keyboard, drums, bass, percussion, reeds 1 and 2, and trombone. Harada explains that among the other challenges with Days of Wine and Roses were the number of scenes, varied locations and the passage of time. He recalls that when he, Meadows and director Michael Greif initially spoke about sound effects, they approached it more like a play with music. In fact, street sounds frequently waft into scene transitions. Sometimes a character is on the street, so it is an environmental cue, but not always.
“Michael liked the traffic conceit,” Harada notes. “Sometimes it’s used more as a background to indicate location, sometimes other effects are used to indicate movement and time passing. In the first number, ‘Magic Time,’ the crowd noise is essentially another character in the play, and we worked hard with timing and content to make sure it was never in the way but also enhanced some of the storytelling in that song.”
According to Harada, Days of Wine and Roses had only a few changes between off-Broadway and Broadway. A lot of what they are doing on the Great White Way is very similar to what they did downtown. He says that while a couple of the cast members changed, the scenic design grew in size, and they added a reed player and a trombone player to the orchestration. “Ultimately for me it was about trying to create that intimate and acoustic sound in a larger space,” Harada says. “Fortunately, I really enjoyed how Studio 54 sounded as a theater for a show like Days of Wine and Roses.”
The show is mixed on a Studer Vista 5SR console, and the cast is miked up with Sennheiser MKE-1s and 2s and SK6212 transmitters. The orchestra is captured with a mixture of Sennheiser, AKG, Schoeps, Neumann and Shure mics, plus four Radial JDI direct boxes. The amplification is predominately Meyer including Lina, Ultra-X40, UPQ-1P, UPA-2P, UPJ-1P, and UPM-1P loudspeakers, 750LFC subwoofers, along with a few d&b E0 loudspeakers.
The Studer is configured to use 120 mono inputs, 22 stereo inputs, 14 mono groups, 10 stereo groups, 16 mono auxes, 10 stereo auxes, 16 mono matrices and 10 stereo matrices. “We do not use all of those things, but this is a configuration that works well for most of my shows,” Harada explains. “We have approximately 48 orchestra inputs, 16 RF inputs, 16 QLab channels and a host of utility and reverb returns.”
Great Team, Great Sound
Harada gave props to all of his sonic collaborators on the show, including Meadows, who spent five weeks in off-Broadway previews alone while Harada worked on another production. He praised the off-Broadway sound team of Ben Steinhauer and Joy Cheever, the Broadway sound team of Adam Rigby and Douglas Graves, the production audio team of Phil Lojo and Ian Carr and gear-provider Masque Sound.
“I was grateful to do something that sounded very natural in a good space with a great team,” Harada says. “Especially with such amazing talent as Kelli O’Hara and Brian d’Arcy James. You can’t beat that chemistry, no matter how depressing the subject matter of the show is!”
Days of Wine and Roses opened at Studio 54 on Jan. 28, and this limited engagement wraps up on April 28, 2024.
