An official opening by HRH Queen Elizabeth II and performances by José Carreras and Dame Kiri Te Kanawa have marked the restoration of Scarborough’s historic open air theatre.
Originally built in Northstead Manor Gardens in the 1930s and officially opened by the Lord Mayor of London, Scarborough’s open air theatre is to this day the largest in Europe. At its inception, audiences flocked to see Edward German’s popular English comic opera ‘Merrie England’, the first production ever to be staged at the magnificent outdoor venue.
The theatre’s construction took advantage of sloping ground contours, which created a natural amphitheatre and provides ideal acoustic conditions for all kinds of musical entertainment. The stage was (and still is) set on an island in the middle of a lake with fixed seating for the audience opposite, originally set out in five blocks with more than 6,000 seats.
At the height of its popularity the seaside holiday venue drew thousands each night, offering theatrical productions and lavish musicals. The much loved It’s a Knockout series was also a big draw at Scarborough, enjoying an unbroken run of more than eleven years. However musicals all but ceased in 1968, and in 1977 the dressing rooms and the stage building on the island were demolished and the seating was removed.
Fast forward to 2010, and a grand redevelopment project costing £3.5m was initiated, mostly privately funded with assistance from Scarborough Borough Council. The newly restored theatre was officially opened by the Queen in May 2010, marked by a special event which featured a semi-permanent Turbosound audio system installation, designed and supplied by Subfrantic Production Services.
London-based Subfrantic, headed up by Stephen Davies and Sean Murphy, specialises in both permanently installed and rental audio projects all over the UK, and their policy of supplying only the most appropriate equipment at highly competitive rates – together with a well established long term relationship with the client’s production manager – secured them the Scarborough contract.
The Turbosound rig will be in place throughout the entire summer season, come rain or shine. Subfrantic’s operations manager Sean Murphy explains the PA configuration: “We have been involved with the project from the outset, and with the management company having a long-term lease on the site we also took a long-term view on the PA architecture, right down to the speaker hangs being specifically designed around Aspect. With Turbosound’s help we configured the system to be as versatile as possible, knowing the huge variety of entertainment scheduled in for the 2010 season – from the grand opening by the Queen in May, through to the World Cup events and on to the end of September with a mix of comedy, opera and popular music.”
The Aspect system wraps neatly around the minimalistic Total Fabrications custom PA towers, and consists of 12 TA-890H mid-highs each side, flown 4-wide and 3-deep. Just inside of the PA hangs, and ground stacked at stage level, six TA-890L double 15” low frequency cabinets sit on top of four TSW-218 double 18” subwoofers ground stacked each side. The rig is powered by MC2 T-series amplifiers, with system control provided by Turbosound’s LMS-D26 processors. The FOH system is complemented by a lightweight and powerful TFM-450 monitor rig and Floodlight TFL-760H sidefills, again all powered by MC2 T-series amplifiers and LMS-D24 processors.
The original stage design placed the PA hangs behind the video screens, and did not allow for adequate coverage of the extremely wide audience area. But once the PA positions were moved outwards and away from the screens, Aspect’s predictable dispersion patterns allowed Murphy and Davies to accurately model the system’s coverage in both the horizontal and vertical planes.
Once on site, flying the PA proved to be a challenge. “The flypoints are actually directly over the lake,” says Murphy, “making it a little more difficult to get the boxes in the air!” The solution was to build each stack off to one side, and then carefully swing it out and up into position. “The intuitive nature of the Aspect’s rigging hardware made it very easy for us to build the stack by locking in the integrated flyware, and then simply take it up in one go,” he continues.
Scarborough’s entertainment program really got into its stride in July – regaining its former glory with the staging of a gala opening performance by opera greats Jose Carreras and Dame Kiri Te Kanawa on July 23, supported by the Orchestra of Opera North and Huddersfield Choral Society and compered by the stentorian actor Brian Blessed.
This is also not the first time that the renowned opera stars have enjoyed more than a passing encounter with Turbosound. The Croatian capital Zagreb was the setting for a spectacular Christmas charity concert which featured Jose Carreras and the Zagreb Philharmonic Orchestra – for which Croatian production company Lite-Prom provided a 36-box Aspect centre cluster system. And Carreras and Te Kanawa – both well-known as perfectionists on the subject of live sound – have commented favourably in the past on their inspirational experiences of Turbosound systems, going back as far as 1992.
Experienced FOH mixer Simon Honywill engineered for Carreras at Scarborough – no stranger to the Turbosound brand but this was only his second time in front of an Aspect system – and was suitably impressed: “Despite a pre-rig day from hell in near-horizontal rain, and although I’m not completely familiar with Aspect having used it only once before, I did get a good chance to get amongst it. I think the horn design is excellent, and I really like the labyrinth phase plug concept.”
The addition of four TA-890H mid/highs placed behind the scrims at ground level as in-fills, together with some concentrated listening, a little time spent tuning with a SMAART analyser, and some system tweaking resulted in a good image and an improved low end. “It sounded really good once I had tamed a few low frequency areas, and I thought the system itself covered well apart from an area at the very top of the bleachers,” Honywill explains.
“Simon asked us to reduce the level of the inside stacks slightly, and this highlighted the system’s versatility,” says Murphy, “a 30-second job because we had configured the amps to be able to trim each column.”
“The guys from Subfrantic were really helpful, and were there an occasion in the future I would be very happy to work with them again,” Honywill concludes.
Scarborough’s opening operatic show was followed a week later, on 31 July, by a second spectacular: an 80s Revival Weekend starring Boy George, Rick Astley, Kid Creole & The Coconuts, Midge Ure, Nik Kershaw, Paul Young, Hazel O’Connor, Heaven 17, T’pau and Toyah Wilcox.
The Aspect system was similarly configured as for the previous week with left and right clusters flown 4-wide and 3-deep, and coped effortlessly with the change in musical style. “With a capacity crowd of 6,500 in the arena the system was certainly loud enough, with unparalleled clarity. It’s quite an experience to be able to hear that many people singing along to ‘Never Gonna Give You Up’ and yet still be able to hear the PA system clearly over the top of that many voices,” says Subfrantic’s Murphy.
Stage monitoring consisted of 10 TFM-450 neodymium bi-amped two-way floor wedges, two Floodlight TFL-760H side-fills and a TQ-425 double 15” sub on the drums, as well as eight sets of in-ear monitors.
Murphy has the last word: “On stage, the TFM-450s created an environment which the artists were more than happy with, even though we had to keep to relatively low levels. In fact, after the event we had comments from the band about just how good the sound on stage was. In my opinion the 450s are still the best wedges on the market!”
Entertaining Scarborough’s seaside holiday-makers for the rest of the summer season is a smorgasbord of great comedy and music including Jack Whitehall and Stuart Lee, The Doves, The Futureheads, Madness and Justin Fletcher. Entertainment chiefs are expecting that thanks to Subfrantic’s audio expertise and Turbosound’s product innovation, Scarborough’s open air theatre will very quickly regain its former glory.
Photos by kind permission of Paul McMullan and Tony Bartholomew.
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