Bare - Palladium, 7th April

[andrew]

I felt so outraged watching this. The sound issues were absolutely terrible - at what point do we just decide to boycott all of these staged concerts once and for all? So many of my favourite songs (Confessions, You and I, Best Kept Secret) were completely lost due to appalling sound. That being said, Laurie Kynaston is an absolute superstar and I don’t think this role has ever been performed better. His performance was worth the ticket price alone - the girl playing the sister was also excellent.

[andthelight]

Was sitting in the Upper Circle and was shocked by not only the poor sound but quite a lot of dodgy lighting cues in the first half in particular - a couple of moments where the house lights almost came on…. If it wasn’t for Laurie Kynaston’s outstanding singing, it would have felt like students had taken over the Palladium for a night, dodgy tech and kind of amateurish plotting too.

I thought some of the songs were great, but my friend has been hyping this show up for me for years and I just couldn’t understand why. Half of the UC gave it an ovation though so I suppose as a show it just has pretty loyal fans who didn’t care as much about the slap-dash staging

[Oobi]

Oof. Major oof. This was… truly very bad. It won’t take me long to list the things I liked, so let’s start off by listing all the people who deserve to be fired.

First up is the director. I’d listened to the Bare soundtrack before and found songs to enjoy, but the work is drenched in early 2000s indie rock energy that works better in high school productions than on a massive West End stage. My eyebrows were raised in the first scene, when the priest, rather than delivering his sermon with understated Catholic gentility, started crowing like a southern baptist. And as the show progressed there kept being lines that landed in that slightly “off” way that evoked laughter in Diana: The Musical. By the time Jason’s ghost was ascending the stairs at the back of the stage while Peter mimed CPR at the front of the stage and a flute played off-key, the confusion in the auditorium was palpable.

Second to be fired is the audio team. I don’t understand how, given the frequency with which concert productions of musicals are staged these days, technicians STILL routinely fail to cue performers’ microphones. Sister Chantelle had it worst; if you told me the soundboard operator was a vengeful ex-boyfriend of hers, trying to humiliate her by intentionally missing the first 1.5s of each of her lines, I would believe you in a heartbeat. And the muffled vocals behind the percussion meant I constantly missed lines in ensemble numbers.

Third up is the lighting designer, which is surprising given how low-maintenance you’d expect this show to be, lighting-wise. They had these profoundly ugly triangle patterns projected onto the stage for almost the entire runtime; it was presumably supposed to evoke stained glass, but all it made me think of was crazy paving. “The Role of a Lifetime”, my personal favourite song in the show, was soured by the bewildering decision to have spotlights slowly turn on and off in parts of the stage Peter wasn’t standing. I guess the idea was that Peter was refusing to “play his part” on the metaphorical stage, but it just came off distracting - like the actor was constantly missing his mark.

Fourth is the guy who played Matt. It pains me to pick on him because I saw him in The Little Big Things and can vouch for his acting chops when playing weepy leading men getting over their trauma, but as a jealous religious bigot he was less convincingly homophobic than the gay character he targeted. His f-slur landed with the spontaneous apathy of a fart. I also question the decision to cast a wheelchair-bound guy in a role that requires him to physically tackle someone, but that’s more an issue with the casting director than the actor in question, so let’s move on.

I have critiques for the score - the tunes are repetitive and samey, the lyrics are amateurish, the themes are underdeveloped - but honestly, I do see why lots of people relate to it. Hell, as an ex-Catholic, I relate to some of it, especially the scenes where Peter talks to his mom and Jason talks to the priest. But those good spots are surrounded by tedious sung-through mediocrity.

I’m glad I saw it, but I for one won’t be disappointed if this show is consigned to cult musical theatre history. 3/10.

[bobbievanhusen]

Whilst there were sound issues, I don't feel there was anything to be outraged about. Disappointed, yes.

The guy playing Matt might have been sick, that doesn't excuse him screwing up the big confrontation in act 2, forgetting lines abd suddenly having an English accent.

Overall it was the Bare that I know from the recording and it was nice to hear it again, but it did feel dated and could have done with some staging, an idea of the setting and costumes. Ivy, the party girl with a reputation was wearing a bomber jacket most of the night.

One thing that did occur to me watching this tonight, was if Jason stayed at Ivy's, had sex and got her pregnant, where was Nadia, Ivy's room mate and Jason's sister during all that??

[marob]

Apr 7, 2024 21:42:51 GMT bobbievanhusen said:

What I will say is that Laurie Kynaston, who was completely new to me, is a star in the making. He had the best vocals, didn't need to add riffs like some did, abd played it honestly. I will book to see whatever he does next. He would be a fantastic Quasimodo if it ever gets done here.

He’s currently at Wyndham’s in Long Day’s Journey Into Night.

I saw him years ago in The Winslow Boy. Am happy to see he’s doing well for himself, but I seem to be fated to miss pretty much everything he does on stage.

Still a but gutted my performance of Spring Awakening got cancelled, especially having planned a trip around it, but looks like I dodged a bullet with this one.

[nash16]

Stop supporting this kind of cash-grab concert.

They do no one any favours.

And the amount of time that sound team will have had to get everything right will have been ridiculously small.

Stop feeding the beast.

[max]

This may be a naive question, but could these venues that tend to house concerts of musicals (Palladium and Drury Lane in particular) have an 'always available' sound design that's default for quick set-ups? Or is the problem that a lot of these events want to go beyond simple concert staging and over reach with complexity? I guess however good the sound template, it's no good if the person in charge fails to switch mics on, on cue.

[Seriously]

The sound op is usually hearing the musicians and orchestration for the first time that day. And often the script has been butchered by the director in rehearsals (and changes due to people dropping out at the last minute) that the script they inherit to mix to bears no relation to the mics that need to be raised.

As The Palladium is so expensive to hire, there'll have been a get-in to put the equipment (lighting, sound, etc) at around midnight to 9am. Then the orchestra will have the morning to set up. In the afternoon there'll be a run of the show, where the cast finally get to see how little space they have, and the director will be stopping every 2 lines to re-block something, and the lighting designer will be 3 cues behind. Often you don't even get to run the full show with everything as you have to stop to let the audience in.

The sound op is trying to follow every line in a script he's seeing for the first time, whilst juggling the band, sound effects, special effects, and cast mistakes. So they do their best. If you get an amazing sound op, it's easier. But it's always difficult.

The real fault here are naive producers who don't understand that you need more than a day to put a show in and to tech it properly. But they won't pay for that, despite charging top rates for tickets.

And the other culprit here is the woeful standard of directors these days, who rarely understand how to schedule and run a rehearsal room. They seem to think the tech is just another rehearsal, when actually it's valuable time for all the other departments who are finally joining the process on the day.

You cannot put a sound system and lighting rig in from midnight to 10am, then have an orchestra sound check from 10-1pm, then a cast in for blocking, lights and quick changes from 2-5 and expect a professional standard show. Yes sometimes you get lucky, but it's a massive gamble that producers are taking with YOUR money.

This one sounds like the perfect storm of a bad sound op, a inadequate director, and cheapskate producers.

[horton]

Balancng sound in such circumstances can be tricky, but un-muting mics in time shouldn't be that hard in a concert setting. Seems they had a very novice sound designer/ op.

These producers are taking their audiences for suckers.

[lotster]

Having been very disappointed by a few, I decided only to book discounted tickets to these concerts as often they do have people in their casts I really want to see. The Addams Family and Side Show really encouraged me that these CAN be good, but then hearing about this one and also Made in Dagenham a few weeks ago, puts me off again. I really want to go to the Pippin one, but they really do seem very hit and miss.

[Matt]

Apr 8, 2024 6:50:19 GMT horton said:

Balancng sound in such circumstances can be tricky, but un-muting mics in time shouldn't be that hard in a concert setting. Seems they had a very novice sound designer/ op.

These producers are taking their audiences for suckers.

No I would put it down to a very minimal amount of tech rehearsals, rather than the competence of the sound engineer.

[iantheknow]

Cheap cheap cheap, I agree stop feeding into these scam of so called ‘West End’ concerts where the production team profess to putting on a West End show, it’s not, it’s a cheap money making scheme for both ALW theatres and these market boy producers. I could have almost predicted what was gonna be said, poor sound etc etc…… when will people learn that you’re paying good money for sub quality nonsense. Creatives and performers who work for these people should think about what this does to the people who support them. Don’t cheapen your brand by just taking the money regardless of the quality. But what do I know? Well I know not to buy into this utter scam

[MoreLife]

Apr 8, 2024 6:50:19 GMT horton said:

Balancng sound in such circumstances can be tricky, but un-muting mics in time shouldn't be that hard in a concert setting. Seems they had a very novice sound designer/ op.

These producers are taking their audiences for suckers.

I wasn't there last night, so my comment is more of a general one about what sound technicians do and how, and it is based on my experiences in an am dram context where professional sound people have been involved. 

Because of how technology has evolved and progressed, a lot of the mic cues (and similarly a lot of the light cues) tend to be at least in part pre-programmed, so that during the performance a sound tech person will only need to, for example, press a single button for the volume on a group of mics to be turned up simultaneously, instead of having to act manually on multiple sounds tracks at once, etc.  Of course it's not just as simple as that, and there's more adjustments and fine-tuning happening live, etc.  

However, in order for this kind of set-up to work as smoothly and seamlessly as we typically hear on shows with a really good sound design, the sound tech team starts to attend rehearsals even before the shows goes officially into tech, so that they familiarise themselves with who is who and who sings what in the show.  They'll take notes and make plans with the director and musical director, so that what is ultimately created sound-wise also matches their vision and needs, etc.  Then, during the actual tech process, group numbers are often broken down and rehearsed in pieces so that mic cues and levels can be pre-adapted and the sound/light tech team end up with a very detailed map/timeline which attaches a certain set of mics being on at the same time with specific cues in the music or the script.  Solo numbers are clearly easier to manage, but there still may be need to fine tune volumes to create certain effects (see Elphaba's mic typically being boosted at certain points during her big solos).    

After that, the final rehearsal runs of a show (and typically the first previews when those are a thing) can be used for all the above to be optimised - after all, the sound/light tech team need to rehearse the sequence of actions that form that map/timeline to have it in top shape.  Very often it is also about adjusting sound levels on stage, which an audience won't be aware of, but which may help cue performers in, help with tempo issues, etc.  

Unfortunately, the producers behind some of these concerts are clearly skipping several ones of those steps in the process... For some of them, it's almost inevitable because, the team will only get into the theatre on the day of the concert, so there's little time for the them to adjust to the actual conditions in the space.  My guess is that other issues could potentially be made up for and dealt with if these producers invested more money and had the tech team more involved during the rehearsal process and (I presume) if they had more of a rehearsal process to begin with. 

My impression is that they put these events together over a very short time, they get everyone in the room only in the very lead up to the event, and then there's so much to be worked on that unfortunately... a lot gets sacrificed, and quality is badly affected.  

[fiyerorocher]

This was such a shame. I love this show and always try to catch it when it pops up, but this was the worst I've seen it. I encouraged some friends to go and ended up basically having to apologise to them and convince them that the show is so much better than this production and they should try to catch it again some other time.

The acting was largely good from where I was sitting, with the already mentioned exception. The lighting was confused, confusing and distracting. Sometimes cues were behind, sometimes they were just baffling. The direction frequently added to the confusion. I had to explain in the interval some of the keys parts of act 1 that I knew would have been missed by a newbie. The terrible sound did not help this at all - there are multiple times were the ensemble sing one line each and when you only hear the second half of every line, it's impossible to follow unless you already know the lyrics. The accidental comedy of Peter singing 'did you really hear me?' with his mic turned off was particularly ironic. No, Peter, no we did not.

I was surprised that they'd made a few changes to the dialogue/lyrics, but not in the most sensible places. Most of the changes were fine - I quite like that Peter now audibly tells Matt about him and Jason. But if you're making changes, why not address the two lines that most need to go: 'Does your father have a camcorder?' does not work in a production where you give the characters smart phones. This would be an incredibly easy fix. I cannot fathom why it hasn't been changed. And 'there's a soul of a black woman inside every gay man' also needs to go, as it has half the audience grimacing every time. These still remain.

I think what annoys me most is the missed opportunity here. This show could probably do a healthy run at TOP with the right cast, but all they've inspired is complaints and criticism (which, after that performance, they deserve). This could have been a great way to reintroduce this show to London, and to a new demographic (JLG bringing in the Heathers/B&C fans), but I doubt many people would be encouraged to see it again. Please do, if you get the chance. I promise when you can actually hear it, it's often a lovely show.

[Being Alive]

There are concert producers who get it right (Fourth Wall who do a lot at Cadogan Hall, and also some bigger stuff at Drury Lane and Palladium usually have decent sound, but their concerts look like they put a lot more money into them than the likes of the producers of Bare and Made In Dagenham)

These concerts do have their place, but there are too many different producers who simply are doing it as a cash grab, and they are tarnishing the companys reputation of those who do get it right, and most of the people attending have no idea it's not one production company doing all these concerts that pop up. It's really not fair on the ones who are putting the time, effort and money into ensuring the sound (the most important element of a concert!!!!) is good.

[normasturban]

The lack of consistency is what bothers me most.

Side Show and Bare were produced by the same company. One was a fantastic night of theatre with a couple of late mic cues but largely, a wonderful show, the other was Bare.

[harlow]

For my taste, I’d take a performance without blocking, without an attempt at costuming, and without lighting changes - if there was integrity to the sound. I wouldn’t mind a blank stage with all performers in rehearsal blacks just singing. If I can hear you, the material has the chance to move me. If all I am thinking about is missed cues, lighting changes and clumsy costumes - you’ve lost me before you really even get started. There was only one reason I stated past the first act and that was Laurie Kynaston’s beautiful voice - which was effortlessly moving , when I could hear it.

[max]

Thanks for your v interesting post MoreLife.

To what extent can an experienced Sound Designer anticipate the difference that a full auditorium will make to the sound produced during Tech with a mainly empty house? Even with some of the skipped production stages you describe in these concerts, a single performance won't have a chance to tweak that actuality (other than in the panicked moment of that one performance).

[BVM]

I am no sound expert, but isn't it easier to piggy back into an existing sound design?

All the concerts I have seen at Drury Lane have sounded superb. And I have assumed that given they are using the same set of speakers that are in situ for Frozen, it makes designing sound for a one off concert much easier.

Do venues like The Palladium have a set of speakers installed generally? Or does every single one off event have to arrange their own?
(Obviously I understand that the speakers are the very end point of a long sequence of sound provision; but having an appropriate set appropriately positioned already must make things easier).

[Oobi]

I have to disagree with the people saying that these things are always low-effort cash grabs. Personally, I've seen 9 concert productions since COVID: two were exceptional and deserved the label of "semi-staged" (Bonnie & Clyde, The Addams Family); four were competent, with mostly strong choreography/lighting/sound/casting (Chess, Evita, Death Note, Love Never Dies); while three felt like scams (Doctor Zhivago, Diana, Bare).

Admittedly, a 33% chance that you're going to waste ~£40 on your theatre trip is significant. On the other hand, the common denominator between the three "scam" concerts is that they were only one night, while the others ran for two or more. That might be the best way to ascertain how serious producers are.

[Being Alive]

You'll notice that the three the poster above says were poor were all from the same producer...

[Peter]

I did wonder if there would be pattern - I imagine there are varying approaches between different producers which yield very different results! I’ve only seen one concert - The Witches of Eastwick - which was top notch, so would have no hesitation seeing any future concerts produced by Jack Maple (I think?).

[ruthieh]

And yet it was the same people who produced Sideshow, so they can get it very right.

[doornumberthree]

I think some of us are looking back at Side Show with rose tinted glasses, there were a lot of sound issues there too and the god awful costumes that had the ensemble looking like a New Look clearance rail.

I feel like we have all come to expect bad quality from Lambert Jackson’s concerts, even before Side Show, we were joking about ‘if’ we would be able to hear them or not.

[alece10]

I had no issues with sound at Side Show apart from a couple of tiny missed mic cues at the beginning. I've seen that happen even in long running west end shows and as this was a concert I didn't go to see pretty costumes. I went to see and hear a great cast performing a great score which is exactly what I got.
Maybe I'm just easily pleased!