Adrian Bamford of Clarity Pro Audio was recently asked to provide a sound system for Mal Pope’s third musical production “Cappuccino Girls”. Following a long and successful partnership with KV2 Audio, Adrian chose yet again to specify KV2 products. Below, Adrian talks about the production and the factors behind specifying the system he chose.

 

“Swansea-based singer/songwriter Mal Pope was signed to Elton John’s ‘Rocket Records’ in 1976 at just 16 years of age, and has been a prolific original artist ever since. Mal’s third musical theatre show, Cappuccino Girls, has been described as a cross between ‘Friends’ and ‘Sex & The City’. It’s an entertaining story with very strong musical content. We have had a long association with Mal and he asked earlier this year if we would sound-design the first run of the show.

 

“The most challenging venue from a sound point is view is ‘The Gate’ in Cardiff which is a converted Church with the performance area being on the first floor, seating around 400. Much of the original shape of the building remains so the performance is almost ‘in the round’ with the audience surrounding the floor in a ‘U’ shape – there is no stage as such, and all seating is raked to some degree.

 

“It was difficult at first to work out whether there should actually be a front of house system at all but the seating at the bottom of the ‘U’ seemed to at least feel slightly prioritised so we called that the front and worked from there. We placed a pair of KV2 EX10 active enclosures at stage left and right, and eventually settled on sitting them in their wedge orientation on top of a couple of flight cases covered in black cloth; sight lines were quite an issue here so stands or poles would have been a problem. The EX10’s dispersion is 100I0; vertical by 80I0; horizontal when upright, so it suited our purpose well with the raked seating.

 

“For the audience seated at the sides, again, we were restricted in how we could place in-fills so we flew a pair of EX6s above each section on a drop of around three metres with the enclosures hung upside down to lower the HF. With the EX6’s dispersion being 100I0; x 100I0;, this arrangement filled these areas effortlessly.

 

“Musical theatre directors don’t like seeing too many speakers dotted around so foldback was handled by another pair of EX6s; one upstage and one down. The music in the show gets quite punchy at times so we hid an EX2.2 sub-bass enclosure behind the backdrop to add some depth.

 

“There are only five people in the cast, so the show is run from a small digital desk (Yamaha 01v96II) and FOH left, FOH right, flown in-fill Left, and right, and the sub are all run from separate busses. Working alongside specialist theatre sound designer, Andy Collins, every section was delayed to various degrees, with the idea being to focus the sound at the centre of the stage.

 

“The room is very reverberant, which is a legacy from its former use, and this proved to be the biggest obstacle to intelligibility but one of the strengths of all KV2 HF is that it cuts through reverb like knife through butter. This factor, coupled with the room ‘drying out’ once the audience was in, allowed us to achieve excellent coverage and clarity.

 

“The show has been running at the Gate since the 2^nd of December and concludes on the 19^th, it’s sold very well and has received some excellent reviews. All components of the sound system have certainly met, if not, exceeded expectations and we regularly get people crying during the poignant moments, and then up from their seats during the ‘rockers’.”