The Really Useful Group (RUG) licensed production of the Andrew Lloyd-Webber blockbusting musical has just opened and is scheduled to play the 1650 capacity Cirkusteatern arena for a year, for which the Robe lights were specified by associate lighting designer, Mike Odam.
Mike's history with Phantom dates back to 1986 when he was the production LX on the original stage adaptation in London along with Howard Eaton, and they helped facilitate Andy Bridge's highly memorable Tony Award winning lighting design for the show's opening at Her Majesty's Theatre. Stockholm was Mike's 58th Phantom project!
He co-ordinates and oversees lighting and re-lights of new and current RUG productions of the show which has become a massive commercial success and a global musical theatre phenomena.
While the lightshows are still completely faithful to Andrew's classic emotive design in appearance and style, the technology has changed dramatically in 30 years. As Mike recalls they delivered that first production without moving lights, scrollers even DMX, smartphones or laptops - a feat completely unthinkable in 2016!
Moving lights now make up the bulk of the lights on the show, and this has reduced focussing time considerably, along with the amount of fixtures needed.
Mike has visited the Robe factory in the Czech Republic and was impressed with the set up. Last year, he had the chance to evaluate some of their latest technologies which were designed especially for theatre, specifically the DL series of LED luminaires, and after liking what he saw and chatting to Andy (Bridge) was waiting for an opportunity to come up to spec some of these and other Robe elements. This presented itself in Stockholm.
Cirkus in Stockholm is a challenging venue as it was originally built for circus performance, so there is no balcony and very limited lighting positions which all have low weight loadings.
Apart from one front truss which accommodates all their general front washes, all the other FOH positions are now Robe moving lights that replace multiple booms rigged with standard profiles and an assortment of lenses.
Working on Stockholm lighting team with Mike were Andrew Bridge who oversaw the operation, taking it through the previews; assistant LD / production LX Andy Bird and programmer Dave Totaro.
The production's main lighting contractor is Netherlands based Flashlight, with the Robe DL4S Profiles supplied via Copenhagen based rental company Litecom.
(Jim Evans)
