Let me start by repeating that I loved the show.  Spending the last 8 months immersing myself in the sound and music aspects of community theatre has now changed forever the way I view performances.  So this post is about my personal take-aways and how I will try to use them in my future work.  It’s all about the details…

The sound work was generally  good. There were no credits in the program for either sound design or sound ops.  Surprising.  I’m guessing that the sound work was done by Wheaton College students.

All the lead actors were mic’d with wireless rigs and they were well balanced.  But the mic’s were not not dressed particularly well and in a couple of cases, took away from the overall aesthetics of the excellent costumes.  A little more time and a little more tape would have made a big difference.  There were 4 stage mic’s across the from of the stage.  These worked well capturing the ensemble’s sound.  There were 2 overhead mic’s hung at center stage but I couldn’t tell if they were for recording or reinforcement.

The few sound effects (basically gunshots) were miscued and so didn’t really provide the extra tension in a couple of scenes.  Having been in this situation myself a couple of times, it’s worth fighting for a little more tech time to getting the timing of critical sound effects nailed.  The other aspect that I found surprisingly distracting was that the gun shots were coming from the main speakers above the stage.  Having worked on a couple of shows that made use of additional, localized stage speakers I really appreciate the extra bit of realism they provide.  It’s something I will push for when I get a chance to do some sound design (hopefully this spring).

The music.  As I mentioned in my previous post, there was an excellent 11-pc orchestra.  They were un-mic’d (at least as far as I could see).  The Musical Director (David Renoni – music teacher at Coyle and Cassidy High School in Taunton) created a nice local balance of the band in most cases.  There were only a few situations where I felt like the band over-powered the singers

My take-aways from the band are:

Mic the French Horn – I love this sound and it tends to get lost without a little help.

A band should always have a bass.  This one didn’t for some reason.  Bass is definitely in the original show orchestration and the bottom end was definitely missed in the overall mix.

Trumpet players play too loudly.  As an ex-trumpet player, this is hard for me to admit.  But it ’s really true.  I actually heard a couple of different folks from the audience mention this as we were leaving the theatre.  And I don’t think this means amplifying the rest of the band to match the trumpets – the MD needs to work on getting them to listen harder and play softer.

That’s it for this show.  A fantastic show, talented performers, an excellent band and a few tidbits for me to remember/use in the future.

It’s been a week since the the Jesus Christ Superstar performance at Derryfield Rep, and I needed another theatre “fix”.  As luck would have it, the solution was two minutes down the road at Wheaton College’s Weber Theatre.  The Triboro Musical Theatre and Wheaton College are presenting 2 performances of “Curtains” (January 15,16) .  It was glorious!! OK… I’ll come clean, I had never heard of this show and I decided not to do any research before the performance.  This morning I spent a few minutes on the net getting some more background- thanks to IBDB.  Curtains is by Kander and Ebb (”Cabaret”, “Chicago”, etc.)- it’s a purposefully old-style musical/whodunit.  The original show ran on Broadway from March ‘07 to June’08 and starred David Hyde Pierce and Debra Monk.  The Amazon link has some additional information but unfortunately no samples of the wonderful music.

OK back to last night’s performance.  The cast was very talented and it showed in the acting and singing as well as in the choreography.  Ted Nesi as Lt. Frank Cioffi and Amanda Nelson as producer Carmen Bernstein were wonderful.  Writeups from other sources refer to them as Wheaton Alumnists (is alumnist a word?)  but you get the idea.  Other Wheaton students star in the production – Katie Anderson (Niki Harris), Pete Rizzo and Lauren Bamford (writing team of Hendricks and Fox).  Another standout was Diana Puccio (Bambi).  It’s unclear to me how the combination of Wheaton College and the Triboro Musical Theatre works and there’s a surprising lack of information about this collaboration (hint hint).  The Triboro’s web site is just a splash page at the moment.

I love the old show-within-a-show template and Curtains does this admirably.  So some of the numbers are about reworking the show and the others relate to the characters and the arc of whodunit.  “Show People”, “Coffee Shop Nights” and “The Man is Dead” were a few of the standouts among the dozen or so tunes.  The show ran almost three hours (including a 15 minute intermission).  It was genuinely enjoyable and I highly recommend getting over to Wheaton College for the second show.

The eleven piece orchestra (!) was excellent under the direction of David Renoni and the sound was reasonably well done.  Now that I’m into the music and sound side of theatre again, the other side of my brain wants to get a little more analytical about what I saw/heard.  But I’ll save that for the next post.