Meyer System Gives La Mancha its Natural Sound
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The Man of La Mancha has returned to Broadway, and once again our windmill-tilting hero transforms his prison cell through the force of imagination, wooing the fiery Aldonza and dreaming his impossible dreams. This current revival at New York's Martin Beck Theatre (where the original musical played 1968-71) has earned glowing reviews for Englishman Jonathan Kent's taut direction and compelling performances by Tony Award-winner Brian Stokes Mitchell in the title role. The sound of the show is carried throughout the house by a sophisticated array of 62 Meyer Sound loudspeakers, supplied by Masque Sound & Recording of Moonachie, New Jersey, of all of which veteran sound designer Tony Meola strived – with notable success – to make acoustically invisible to the audience. "This show is different in that the whole sound is very acoustic," says Meola, who was honored with the Drama Desk award for his sound design for The Lion King. "On this show you don't want to see microphones and loudspeakers, and you want them to disappear to the ear as well as the eye. Fortunately, the Meyer speakers do just that. There's a transparency that you get with Meyer speakers, and by using SIM, that works exceptionally well with this kind of natural-sounding show." The acoustical peculiarities of the 1,300-seat Martin Beck Theatre are certainly well known to Meola. He has designed sound for seven shows in the room, including the last five in a row, and admits a certain fondness for the ornate, Byzantine-styled theatre. "It's spacious but not huge," he says, "and it has a wonderful wood orchestra pit that is deep and shaped like a bandshell. Along with the acoustics it gives the theater a wonderful orchestral sound." Meola's challenge was to subtly augment the room's natural acoustics, evenly distributing sound throughout the house while maintaining a neutral tonality in order to blend seamlessly with the "live" sound coming from the stage and pit. This task is not easily accomplished, particularly when one must preserve the illusion that all sound is emanating from the orchestra and performers on stage. To achieve this illusion of vanishing loudspeakers, Meola anchored his design around two clusters of Meyer Sound MSL-2A full-range loudspeakers, with two tiers of three over the orchestra pit to cover most of the main floor and mezzanine. Three more delayed MSL-2As are mounted on a truss back in the house to cover the balcony. Deep bass for the FOH system provided by four USW-1P Compact subwoofers tucked into stalls and spot boxes. A pair each of CQ-1 Full-Range Wide Coverage loudspeakers and 650-P High-Power subwoofers handle on-stage effects, with six UPM-2P Compact Narrow Coverage loudspeakers encircling the stage for foldback. Orchestral augmentation comes from a pair of UPA-1P Compact Wide Coverage loudspeakers strategically placed in the orchestra pit. The under balcony areas are covered by two rows (eight each) of UPM-2P and UPM-1P Ultra-Compact Wide Coverage loudspeakers, with side fill provided by six UPM-2Ps. Finally, the front-most rows covered by a dozen of Meyer Sound's 4-inch cube MM-4 Miniature Wide-Range loudspeakers. "I just love the MM-4s," comments Meola. "It's so nice to have a tiny cabinet like that available. In fact, I have 70 of them on order for the next play I'm doing, called Wicked, which will have a pre-Broadway run at the Curran in San Francisco. I'll use them for front fill and surrounds, and I'll have them in the floor on stage and even out in the audience. They have vents in the floor, so I'll have sounds coming out from around people's feet." The Broadway revival of La Mancha has proven a solid success, with many critics praising the music and the singing – which, in the absence of direct criticism, is as close to affirmation of his work as a sound designer can hope to receive. "I think we have been very successful on this show," says Meola, "and the Meyer speakers certainly deserve part of the credit." Meola is quick to add that his sound crew deserves applause as well, singling out for praise his associate Kai Harada, assistant Ryan Powers, production sound engineer Jordan Pankin, and assistant sound engineers Bonnie Runk and John Blixt. March, 2003 |
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