The trend of moving successful movies onto the stage continues with Bullets Over Broadway, the new musical based on Woody Allen’s 1994 film that he wrote and directed, and that won seven Academy Awards. For the stage version, which opened last month at the St. James Theatre, Allen wrote the script but turned the reins over to Tony-winning director Susan Stroman, who received a Tony nomination for her choreography on Bullets (where else might you see tap-dancing mobsters and high-stepping molls this season?).
With a total of six nominations, two of the other Tony nods for this production go to set designer Santo Loquasto and costume designer William Ivey Long, who collaborated with lighting designer Donald Holder and sound designer Peter Hylenski, a featured speaker at the 2014 Broadway Sound Master Classes.
“Taking cues from the brassy style of music and the splashy visuals, I’d say the sound of the show is that of a big Broadway musical,” says Hylenski, who notes that “Bullets is, as many of Woody Allen’s movies are, character-based. Santo’s set is pulled about eight feet downstage of the standard St. James proscenium.” As a result, this kind of staging brings the characters very close to the audience. “The sound design works together with this ‘close-up’ concept to source the dialog and vocals to the performers,” Hylenski adds. “Being a musical comedy, the amplified level does need to ride the fine line of feeling as natural as possible, yet allowing the audience to laugh without feeling they’ll miss something.”
The sound system for Bullets is designed using d&b audiotechnik E12 and Q1 loudspeakers in the main proscenium positions, while the delays, fills, and foldback are d&b E0, E5, E6, and E8 units. “I’m using a minimal surround system to pull a little orchestra reverb into the room and a few special effect moments,” explains Hylenski. “For the most part, Bullets is a proscenium-based show.” The core of the system is a Meyer Sound D-Mitri network that serves as a digital mixing system, combined with a Meyer LCS CueConsole. Mic preamps for the orchestra are StageTec TrueMatch reference microphone converters fed digitally into D-Mitri. Sound Associates supplied all of the sound gear. A1 Carin Ford is the FOH board op.
Bullets Over Broadway has one foot firmly in the Roaring 20s, with Doug Besterman’s orchestrations evoking the feel of that period. “In creating the design of the orchestral mix, a large emphasis was put on the ensemble feel of the band,” notes Hylenski. “Much of the music during that period was recorded using one or two microphones. Capturing our band, I tried to bridge the concept of a large, open sound with the detail of modern equipment and microphones. To effectively accomplish this, the physical layout of the band was more critical, versus a fully close-miked band.”
The cast size is about average for this type of show, although Hylenski points out, “we’ve got more men than women due to the number of gangsters hiding out! In addition, each ensemble member plays a number of characters throughout the evening, so swapping in and out of hats is quite a challenge for our standard radio mic rigging techniques.” The singers are fitted with Sennheiser SK 5212 and SK 50 wireless microphone transmitters.
When the set for Bullets was pulled downstage, the main lifts were installed into the St. James pit. “This meant relocating the orchestra to a room under the stage,” says Hylenski. “For this, I called my friend John Storyk of WSDG [Walters-Storyk Design Group] to help create an environment that sounded live and open, rather than a coat closet. The entire room—air conditioning, acoustic treatment, lighting— had to be constructed during the load in.”
The challenges in the sound design for Bullets Over Broadway reflect the industry in general. “Many of our challenges are directly linked together: time, budget, real estate, and technology,” explains Hylenski. “I’d say our biggest challenges in modern theatre stem from how shows are now being written. A cinematic approach to writing and production design of Broadway shows pushes the boundaries of what is expected.
“As a craft bounded by physics and science, sound for theatre is not limitless in its possibilities. You still need speakers in the right places and microphones properly positioned on actors, both of which can be a struggle,” he concludes. “That, combined with trending rock/pop style scores asking for full bands playing underscore, and you can see where designs get tricky.”