Book of Mormon
Hasa Diga Ebowai – could be a good expression for the year 2020. It’s also one of the most memorable songs from Trey Parker, Robert Lopez, and Matt Stone’s smash hit musical Book of Mormon. This musical, first staged in 2011, was initially developed as early as 2003, when South Park’s Matt Stone and Trey Parker began collaborating. Eight years later the musical was staged in New York to immediate and profound success - a musical satire of The Church of Latter Day Saints with its unique set of beliefs and its foothold in modern American society.
“Whilst it’s incredibly long run’s in Melbourne and Sydney are often noted, what people forget is the absolutely massive tenures of some of the original crew”
For several years, the show commanded notoriously high ticket prices, reflecting its enormous popularity. Running for 9 years, the show has grossed over $500 million dollars worldwide, making it one of the most commercially successful musicals of all time. It is in fact, Broadway’s 14th longest running show.
Its Australian tour was no exception to its extraordinary success. Premiering in 2017, Book of Mormon sold out months in advance and would open in Melbourne’s iconic Princess Theatre, now the home of Harry Potter and The Cursed Child. It would break records in sales unseen since the heady days of the first tour of The Phantom of The Opera, going on to play 432 virtually sold out shows in Melbourne from the 17th of January 2017 to the 4th of February 2018; with every promise of a return season being just as successful.
For its Australian tour, System Sound was contracted to provide staff, equipment and engineering by the local producers, The Gordon Frost Organisation. Among others, our Designer David Greasley and operators Louise Hall and Chris Pratt would form the core of this team.
Whilst it’s incredibly long run’s in Melbourne and Sydney are often noted, what people don’t know about are the absolutely massive tenures of some of the original crew, like Sound Head of Department, Chris Pratt and former Deputy Head, Louise Hall, who toured with the show for the most of the almost four years it ran.
Louise, who opened the show would only leave three seasons before its conclusion in Auckland as she was chosen to open the return production of Billy Elliot as Head of Sound. Her tenure on Mormon spanned a huge period of almost 3 years and 973 shows from Melbourne to Brisbane. Chris who stayed on to open Auckland, would finish up after a gigantic 1122 shows.
For some basic maths, that’s a 2.5 hr show, 1122 times, making 2,898.5 hours of pure musical theatre. That doesn’t include the full 5 hour show calls themselves.
Either way. It’s a lot of Mormon. Good thing they both love show tunes!
For Chris, it also started some months before with a trip at the request of the sound designer, Brian Ronan, to learn the Mormon mix. Book of Mormon, aside from being an extremely busy show and musically dynamic, is incredibly focused on the clarity and delivery of lines, particularly jokes. In October of 2016, Chris was flown to New York to learn Mormon from the original team, staying with them for two whole weeks observing and practicing the mix and learning about the sound system.
From there he would travel directly to our production of Les Misérables in Dubai, and then directly to the Book of Mormon’s first load in - the preparatory work having been done at System Sound by our team including Dave Tonion and David Greasley, System’s appointed Australian Associate Designer.
Sound Designer, Brian Ronan, also the designer of the Australian Tour of Beautiful: The Carol King Story, has an extensive theatrical resume having been in Broadway sound design for decades and having engineered many recognisable productions. These include Mean Girls, Lazarus, American Idiot, Nice Work If You Can Get It and Spring awakening among 35 other Broadway productions.
The system itself is fundamentally L-ACOUSTICS based, with classic DVDOSC line arrays making up the left and right arrays and KARA speakers making up the uniquely long centre hang for a powerful band and vocal centre/dow-speak combination. LA-4X amplifiers power the system and it is driven with a combination of and DiGiCo SD7t mixer out front and Digico SD10-RE as a processor backstage. The delays and surrounds are powerful L’acoustics X8’s and d&b E8’s with the intent that all seats in the house hear the full sound even out of shot from all of the main line-arrays and with the ability to produce loud sound effects such as a commanding voice-of-God from behind the audience.
The performers’ mics are unique in that they are a combination of DPA4061 miniature mics, MKE-1 & MKE’2 selected for their particular qualities, for each performer. Tap mics are also used, with MKE-2’s run down both legs of the Mormon boys for “Turn It Off”.
Super Spookey-Wookey!
What stands out about this sound design approach is that the designer has chosen to focus on having very high-quality mics, speakers, and processing and then, after careful aural tuning, to allow the system to run as naturally as possible. Unlike in many new shows, the processing and EQ are largely flat which is partly why the show has such a clear and natural sound, even when it’s pushed to rock and roll levels in “Spooky Mormon Hell Dream”. Brian’s approach puts trust on the quality of the components of his system and teams to achieve the best result.
Whilst the system itself is of very high quality, it is the extraordinary talent and commitment of the people behind the production that makes it outstanding.
Brian Ronan sent Design Associate Cody Spencer to represent him during the set-up and production period of the show, and he worked closely with Chris Pratt, HOD to help reproduce the exact sound achieved on Broadway.
Dave Greasley (Associate Sound Designer), Evan Drill (Production Sound Engineer), Brooke Paterson (Sound Swing), Claire Rhodes (Head of Radios) and Tom Beaumont (Deputy Head of Department)
For the Australia/NZ tour, our wonderful engineer, Dave Greasley was appointed Associate Designer, engineering and designing the show in conjunction with the original team for each venue as well as supervising and managing the team on the ground for each staging. Dave Greasley has worked with us for 27 years. He started on the production of High Society, and has since moved on from operating a number of our most successful shows to designing and engineering productions such as Dirty Rotten Scoundrels in Sydney for which he received a number of award nominations. Having been the Associate Designer on a number of high profile shows such as Les Miserables, Phantom, and Billy, he was the perfect man for the job when Book of Mormon came up!
Chris Pratt and Louise Hall have formed the heart of the team for the majority of the tour, having both opened the show, but also having toured with it for the majority of its tour. In Melbourne, Georgia Boreham opened and set-up the radios behind the show, an extensive and demanding process with over 40 channels being used in custom configurations and with an active plot. Taking over from her from Sydney onwards was the lovely Claire Rhodes who has remained with the show until it’s recent postponement.
During the Melbourne season, seasoned operator Anto Shaw took over for Louise for a few weeks making him one of the just four operators to mix the show during its Australian run. When Louise left to open Billy Elliot as Head of Department, Tom Beaumont would replace her. Tom, fresh off the national tour of The Rocky Horror Show, would ultimately mix through until New Zealand.
Radio’s as previously mentioned, were managed by Claire Rhodes, seen on the right checking through the lot before a show! Claire has a Bachelor of Entertainment Industries at QUT and a Diploma in Live Production and Technical Services at NIDA and is relatively new to the industry coming straight from Beautiful: The Carole King Story. Mormon marks her 6th professional musical, and her first for System Sound, but having done great work with us we are sure there is a big career ahead of her! She’s also very kindly provided us a number of photos available on the left of some of the radios and more great team shots. Thank you Claire!
Mic’s laid out carefully in their protective latex covers
General Butt Fucking Naked’s eyepatch Mic
Double mics for the key players!
Louise mixing on the SD7t
Louise Hall has done great work for us for a number of years having started in sound all the way back in 2005. Her first show with us was Billy Elliot which coincidentally was also Chris’s first show with us too! Since then she’s worked for us on the Australian premiere of Jersey Boys, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Georgie Girl and finally the recent tour as Head of Department on Billy Elliot - but she still quotes Book of Mormon as her favourite to work on so far!
Chris also started around the early 2000s with Priscilla Queen of The Desert and would go on to work for us on Billy, Cats - his first tour, Jersey Boys, Chicago, Wicked, Phantom of The Opera, Les Mis, West Side Story and The Production Company’s Nice Work If You Can Get It. I’m exhausted just typing that! Chris’ favourite show has been working on The Production Company shows for the sheer challenge of the undertaking - Production Company shows have two tech runs before opening and have to be perfect so are not for the faint of heart! Thanks for contributing some great photos to the article Chris!
It goes without saying we’d like to thank and congratulate Chris and Louise both for their extraordinary commitment and hard work over this tour, their attention to detail, consistency and hard work has made this one of our smoothest running shows ever.
We’d also like to say a big congratulations to Tom Beaumont for so capably taking the reigns as Deputy Head of Department for the final three stops of the tour, mixing over 100 shows and fitting into the role beautifully. Tom has worked previously for us on Georgie Girl and Matilda.
Last but not least, thanks to our long time System Sound family member Evan Drill, who has operated countless shows including Love Never Dies, Legally Blonde, Kinky Boots and others and worked as Production Sound Engineer for Mormon in several cities supporting the crew and helping build the show’s transfers from the warehouse to doing the installs as well - couldn’t have done it without you mate!
It has been said that after 9/11, Mel Brooks The Producers single-handedly saved musical theatre in Broadway, bringing in solid houses in a time when people were afraid to leave their homes. Going forward we know Mormon too will be able to rebound with the industry and we all look forward to seeing it thrive once again. Until then, check out these great shots of a great team and their times on this wonderful show. We’re so proud of all the work they’ve done and so happy to have been a part of such a successful and joy-bringing piece of theatre.
Also a special thanks to all the swings that supported the team: Jackson Scandrett, Carley Gagliardi, Sally Hitchcock, Courtney Weaver, “Ghio” Ghiovanna De Oliveira, Jade Salangsang, Tanieka Stones, Ollie Miller, Ben Nelson, Gilroy Valladarez and Brooke Paterson.
