Broadway’s latest musical sensation, Some Like It Hot, updates MGM pictures’ classic Tony Curtis/Jack Lemmon gender-bending comedy for a new generation. It also uses classic Broadway musical elements — everything from big ensemble numbers to tap dancing — while presenting a perky, sassy show that is a crowd-pleaser in both its performances and a storyline, exploring one character’s gender fluid awakening.
Directed and choreographed by Casey Nicholaw, the show features Christian Borle and J. Harrison Ghee co-starring as two jazz musicians on the run from the mafia after inadvertently witnessing a mob killing. They dress up as women and go on tour with an all-women’s big band and get romantically entangled in different ways — one with a woman, the other with a man. Ghee’s character begins embracing his female persona, something that could not have been presented the same way in the original film six decades ago.
On top of the major character evolutions throughout the show, the stars and supporting players also have to portray musicians and dive into some high-energy tap sequences. Sound designer Brian Ronan tells FRONT of HOUSE that all but one of the cast members plays an instrument, so everyone mimes their part and learned how to simulate playing their instruments. Ronan noted the “drummer” in the cast is also a dancer who is like “a walking metronome,” so she adapted easily enough.
On top of nearly 20 cast and ensemble members, the orchestra has 16 musicians and a conductor. But they are placed in different areas. The eight brass players are located on a catwalk above the stage (one slightly off-stage due to space restrictions), and they alternate from being covered by a wall and then uncovered. The conductor, guitar, bass, three fiddles and two keyboardists are in the pit under the stage, while the large percussion setup is located in a large separate room outside of the pit that also serves as the wardrobe change area. For the musicians onstage, Ronan chose to keep the period feel by not hanging mics; instead having the players closed-miked.
Ronan says the last couple of shows he has done have been fairly well pit covered, and given the different sources for stage sound here (above and below), he chose not to concern himself with capturing perfect sound. “I just let it go,” he says. “Flaws and all, I like it that way. I didn’t really occupy myself with the bleed-thru. We did the best we could to isolate people and get the most sound out of all the instruments and cast on stage. I just let it roll over me, and I think it’s part of the fabric of the show. It’s an old school musical, and I think it works. We did our best to get the best pickup on everything we had to do, and if things bled over, that’s the nature of this particular show.”
Mics, Mics, Mics
The actors are mainly wearing DPA 4061s, and the transmitters were either Sennheiser 5212s for body mics (52 total) and 24 Lectrosonics SMMs for wigs and hats. Every reed and sax mic has a clip-on mic. Guitar and bass mostly route through Avalon DIs. There are also DPA 4099s (on violin, clarinet, sax, bassoon and euphonium), Neumann’s new miniature MCM 114 (trumpet and trombone), KM 184 (clarinet and tenor sax), A-T Pro 35 (trumpet and flugelhorn), AMT WS (clarinet, oboe, and flute) and an AMT flute mic. The drums are captured via a wide range of mics, including Shure Beta 98, Sennheiser MKH40 and MKH800, Neumann U87 and KM 184, AKG 414 and DPA 4011. Two communication-style, push-to-talk Shure 527B dynamic fist mics are used for drummer and percussionist talkbacks.
The System
“The setting and the architecture of the [Shubert] theater pushed me to think in different ways,” says Ronan. “For instance, the set is very deco intended and has these irregular pattern fascia, which is cool-looking but a nightmare for front fills. You want nice, solid waves to come out. We have this undulating system. I spent time with the front fills and the proscenium left and right, due to the theater’s architecture and how wide the proscenium was. There’s no way you could get a low array or even get a decent coaxial box there, because you have to watch the head height as people pass by.”
Ronan ended up putting in a d&b speaker horizontally, and he treated the front fills and the proscenium left and right with mini-systems. “The front fields pass through a Galileo,” he says. “I just sat there forever and worked on the timing to try to make those six weirdly spaced speakers act as one. Then I did the same thing around the proscenium. There was nothing substantial enough, for me anyway, so I have a main speaker, a fill speaker and another fill speaker that cover what a singular conventional box would do. I spent time just tweaking them so they all acted as one unit. That was new for me, to try to make multiple speakers act as a single source.”
The speakers are a combination of Meyer Sound, d&b audiotechnik and L-Acoustics (which Ronan calls a personal favorite, giving kudos in particular to their prediction software). The show is mixed on a DiGiCo SD7T Quantum with 214 inputs. “There are a lot of instruments on the brass section,” he says. “There are five mics on every reed player, so that eats up a lot of inputs.”
Tap, Tap, Tap
Ronan says that the most challenging number for him to design was the title song that closes Act One, as it’s a big musical and tap number. “When Casey Nicholaw is the director, you’re going to incorporate a lot of taps into the ever-present underscoring in this show,” he says. “[The song has] a lot of plot-driven lyrics, big orchestration, big band, a lot of tapping, and with our budget, we weren’t allowed to have so many tap mics on too many actors.”
Most of the ensemble members do tap, and he says that eight of them had tap mics. But he had to figure out how to capture everyone and make it all sound good. “It was all elements firing at once, which I found exciting, but also very challenging for Louis [Igoe], the mixer,” says Ronan.
He says there are eight tap mics that go down leggings on the bottom of the pants. Women could not wear them on their skirts because of the consistent moving of the fabric (which can also be a problem with pants), and because Borle changes between men’s and women’s clothing, his situation was more tricky. As Ronan notes, while the best way to mic for tap is to run it down someone’s leg and bind it to their shoes so it does not fly off, quick changes, for example, can prohibit that. Ronan says miking for tap “varies from show to show and character to character and wardrobe department to wardrobe department.”
What was done for Some Like It Hot “is something I’ve gotten into recently after Funny Girl — miking under the deck, or just make mic the deck microphonic,” explains Ronan. “I actually have 15 mics under the deck pointing up and strategically located around [it], and I blend them. I think of it like when you have an acoustic guitar and want a microphone sound, but you also want a little bit of the direct sound. I blended the crispness of the close miking with the microphonic deck.”
Ronan adds that says he “certainly improved the underdeck miking technique from [when I worked on] Funny Girl. I got better at making hardware mounts, which is something I’ll do again.”
There were lessons learned and adjustments made, and the sound turned out tap-tastic.
Some Like It Hot opened on Broadway on Dec. 11, 2022 and is currently booked for a very long run at the Shubert Theater.
Audio Crew
- Sound Designer: Brian Ronan
- Associate Sound Designer: Mike Tracey
- A1/FOH Mixer: Louis Igoe
- A2: Justin Graziani
- Production: Cody Spencer
