Ben Hur Live

On September 17, Ben Hur Live received its world premiere at London’s O2. Based on the 1880 Lew Wallace novel, ‘Ben-Hur, A Tale Of The Christ’, the show promised to deliver ‘history as a real-life experience’.

    Under the roof of the Greenwich dome, a cast of 400 and 100 specially trained animals took us back 2,000 years to tell this famous story of love, vengeance, faith and forgiveness.

    Scripted by British author Shawn McKenna, the two-hour show, which has now begun a year-long European tour, was the brainchild of Franz Abraham, who co-founded Art Concerts with Robert Langer back in 1986. The German company is now an international market leader in the production and sale of musical productions.

    Its previous glories have included concerts and tours by David Bowie, Paul Simon and the Prodigy, but with Ben Hur Live, Art Concerts took on an ambitious challenge as it set out to define a new entertainment genre.

    While Police drummer Stewart Copeland is a major contributor as both the narrator and composer of original music, Abraham called on Mark Fisher and his team at Stufish to design the set, scenery and props.

    Art Concerts designed a 2,500m2 rink to accommodate the set, filling it with 500 tonnes of special sand granulate, mixed specially to achieve the required adhesion to ensure a safe platform for the plethora of bodies, animals and machinery that were to trample on it.

    An external tent area was added to include a riding ring and stables plus ample room for storage — this area alone measures 2,000m2.

    There were more than 50 scene designs incorporated into this production and a multitude of impressive multi-purpose fixtures. One of the key fixtures was the House of Hur, built by Bader Maschinenbau of Geretsried, near Munich.

    It sits on wheels providing easy manoeuvrability across the stage, measuring 10.5m high and 8.7m wide. Versatile in its design, it’s essentially four separate elements that link together to make a single main structure. As well as that, the top section of each of the individual structures comes apart; these are winched up during various scenes by 100 rigging motors provided by German-headquartered Topas and situated above the stage.

    Other fixtures include the two impressive Galleys, which measure 1.79m long x 9.7m high x 3.2m wide. These were built by Czech company Gradior Group. These are also on wheels, 18 in total, and controlled by cast members on foot.

    During the Straits of Messina scene, when the nine pirate boats (dune buggies, each one manually driven and with a couple of aggressive pirates on board) attack Arrius and his Roman crew, the quality of both the build and the design of the Galleys became apparent.

    With a little added realism from the locally-sourced dry ice (providing an ocean effect) and some neat lighting and pyrotechnics, when the Galley split into its individual pieces it really did look like it had been broken apart at sea during a tough battle. [Gradior Group also built the eight 8.5m high pillars that feature throughout the show.]

    The impressive chariots — designed by Gundel Abraham and Nicki Pfeifer, and built by Art Concerts — were used to great effect in the penultimate Chariot Race scene, where the set transformed into a high speed 180m racetrack. Pfeifer was also responsible for the stunt co-ordination and horse training.

    The fountains which feature in the second part of the show were built by Matthis Hoffman of Herrsching, Germany-based Funf-Seen-Werft, and the rock, the centrepiece for the second half, was the work of Hartmut Schmiese of Objektgestaltung.

SOUND
It’s no surprise that Art Concerts chose most of its production suppliers from a wide pool of German companies. Another of them was audio firm Klangschmiede, which provided the 360° configured, self-powered Meyer Sound PA system. This consists of 48 MICAs, 32 UPQs, 70 M’elodies, four MSL4s and 20 600HPs, processed by a pair of Galileos.

    Jim Sides, CEO of Meyer Sound Germany, explained how it all came together: “We have a personal relationship with the production company Media Warehouse, and they were the chosen vendor for Art Concerts — the ones who brought us into the original conversation.

    “Our systems all have a sonic signature that make them work well together. This allows you to marry these types of system much easier than if you took a number of systems from other manufacturers.

    “Also, we make our own amplification, components, cone drivers and high frequency drivers. All processing is built into each cabinet so it has time alignment, fixed EQ and limiting all built in so you have a real efficiency and control. Everything is matched really precisely.”

    As well as boasting the world’s largest touring arena, with 500m of trussing and over 50km of cabling, this production claims to be the first 360° experience with locatable sound, courtesy of Fraunhofer Institute, an R&D-type facility located in the south of Germany.

    Sides continued: “When we first discussed the idea, the concept was to use our Matrix3; we’ve been moving sound in 360° for a very long time, of course. However, what they wanted to do was localisation with extremely challenging time elements and, with the Matrix3 engine we had available at that time, we just didn’t feel comfortable that we could achieve what they wanted to to do, so we recommended Fraunhofer as they’re very experienced in this concept.

    “Their technology is based on their experiments in sound wave synthesis and what they do is quite remarkable. Fraunhofer has used this process successfully in some fixed locations, especially in opera but this is the first time it’s been used in a live touring production. It’s very new for them to do something this complex and designed to tour, so it’s not without the problematic scenarios associated with touring but it really works well for this production.

    “After we saw the rehearsals in Oberhausen, we recommended to Franz Abraham that they to bring in someone to tighten it all up sonically. Two weeks before the show’s London premere, he brought in a very good friend of mine, Frankie Desjardins, who was the FOH/system engineer for Céline Dion on her last tour.

    “Frankie’s had a lot of experience of in-the-round shows all over the world — he did a lot of work with Cirque du Soleil over the years — so he was very familiar with the sound reinforcement requirements they were envisioning with this whole production. I think his advice helped the sound engineers make the show transparent, dynamic and very musical.”

    At FOH position, sound engineer Thilo Far operates a Yamaha PM1D, whose internal FX remove the need for outboard.

    Head of sound Martin Felber explained: “It was my decision to go with Meyer Sound, because their loudspeakers are active. With hundreds of speakers, you can imagine the amount of amps we’d have at the bottom if they weren’t self-powered.

    “The directional mixing — that’s a special thing. It’s able to locate the position of the actors on the stage from anywhere in the arena. We go in from the PM1D, but not with a L/R mix to the PA because we have 32 separated mixes into the direction mixer. That calculates the position for every input with all the delays and all the levels.

    “If you set a position with this mixer, it takes the first waveform from the speaker way up high and the mixer will calculate. All other speakers are on a time delay signature for this — it’s done using a PC with a Linux system.”

    The microphone regime relies heavily on Audio-Technica products, with 11 A-T 5000 Series wireless systems comprising UHF AEW T1000 UniPacks and AEW T5400 handhelds.

    There is also a Shure R4 with UR1M wireless micro bodypack transmitter for lead actor Sebastian Thrun, plus a pair of DPA 4061 miniature condensers and Sennheiser HSP4 headsets. Playback is generated from a multi-channel A!Tec EventDriver system.

LIGHTING
Patrick Woodroffe, the show’s lighting designer, needs no introduction to TPi readers. But how did he get involved in Ben Hur Live?. He explained: “I’d never worked with Franz Abraham before; we talked about doing a show three or four years ago but it never came to fruition, so when he finally got Ben Hur together he was ready to choose his team based on people he’d met and worked with before.

    “This is a very unique production because nobody had done anything like it before. It’s a sports event, a rock concert, a play, a drama — it’s many things, so it took us a while to get it together.

    “Mark Fisher and his Stufish colleague Ray Winkler, in conjunction with our director Phil McKinley, came up with this really interesting thing. We established this language that was historically based. We were clearly back in Nazareth and in ancient Rome but with a very contemporary take on it.

    “We had to be practical; it had to be that you could change the scenery and still have people in 360° look through it and around it and see where the action was in the arena, so lighting clearly became a very important part of that journey.

    “It had to establish mood, dynamics and excitement as well as spectacle, but also generate focus. So it was quite a practical exercise to highlight two people in the company of 150 and try and work out who was saying what and what the story was about.”

    Interestingly, Woodroffe said that the lighting team was assisted by the sound. “It’s such a sophisticated system, so somebody who rode in from one end of the arena not only would be followed by light, but by sound also. That’s where you could start to tell the story.”

    Woodroffe was involved heavily throughout the project, including some intense production rehearsals. He said: “The whole show rehearsed for three months. For the first month there was no light and costume, then we came in to map our main scenes and get the colour right.

    “With a show like this, stuff is always late; you are constantly trying to catch up as you see other bits added. The chariot race was late due to training the horses and so were the market scenes as we had no costumes, but in fact we all felt so positive about this production that about halfway through rehearsals, when something new arrived such as some gladiator armour or a chariot or a costume for the market scene, it upped the ante by another 100%, so that last month was actually very exciting.”

    The main lighting rig, supplied by Neumann & Müller, consisted almost entirely of Martin Professional fixtures including 16 MAC IIIs, 54 MAC 2000 Profiles and 114 MAC 2000 XBs, plus a number of GLP Impression LED washlights positioned at stage level.

    Woodroffe explained: “The GLP LEDs were key because when you have dance, action or movement, you really want to be able to sculpt people’s bodies from the side. We managed to put them in at 360° around the arena, built into the crash barriers.

    “Not only did this light the performers or the horses or the action within the arena, but it kind of made a lighting statement low down as the rest of the lighting was positioned way up high.

    “With collaborations of this scale, you have four or five individual disciplines: light, sound, scenery, action, costume; in this case fight direction and stunt riding also.

    “The secret of any of these productions is to try and make those things seamless. That only happens if you have a very strong creative team and leader, which we had very much in Phil [McKinley].

    “Finding out what the vernacular was from the start and working with the writer, Shaun McKenna, was the key for us. You have to get all that stuff right to allow the audience to suspend their belief and buy into the scene that you are selling them — and I think we got that.”

    Lighting operator Andreas Kisters runs the show from a grandMA console on four PSUs and 12 DMX units at FOH position. A recent convert to his new choice of console, Kisters explained: “I was a fanatical Wholehog II and III user, but I recently chose the grandMA because of the network. The console works perfectly for this production.

    “We started production rehearsals in Dusseldorf, programming and rehearsing for three weeks, then four more weeks in Oberhausen. Everything was in from the start; for the first 10 days, we played with the lights at night with no artists present — just the set — then we did scenic rehearsals with the artists.

    “We’d stop for, say, 10 minutes at the end of each scene, do our corrections, then move on to the next scene and so on. That was the most powerful work we did with the lights together. I now have 340 cues that I activate manually throughout the show — they are not automated and I am the only operator!”

FLASH & BANG
A wide range of Le Maitre special effects were provided and manned by LMP Pyrotechnik. They included 16 red comets, some white beta comets and 16 glitter mines along with 20kg of burning jelly, which was used constantly.

    Pyro operator Lars Hollstein, whose previous credits include Robbie Williams and Genesis, operated a Galaxis radio-controlled console. He told TPi about the challenges he faced when preparing for a show of this magnitude.

    “I trigger everything manually and my biggest challenge is bringing the star up but there are other key scenes. People are actually on the ship when it’s burning so it’s important to get it right!”

    Hollstein works with four other technicians on site, all of whom are freelance, but he is the only one operating.

    He continued: “There’s no routine as such because every venue is a separate challenge. The rehearsals brought a lot of pressure and there was a lot of work for me in pre-production, but we know our effects well. We showed the producer and director all of our ideas, they said yes or no, and things were constantly being changed until everything was perfected.”

    Associate technical director Alex Stekkel, whose main background has been in rock touring with bands including Metallica and the Red Hot Chili Peppers, added: “We have a technical crew of about 30 permanent members — sometimes more, depending on the venue.

    “This job is different to what I normally do and the biggest challenge has been communication, getting all the cast, stage management and the technical guys pulling from the same rope.

    “For the first two weeks of production rehearsals we were with the transport company, Kuehne + Nagel, who provided 62 trucks.”

    Another huge element of the show was the epic musical score, courtesy of Stewart Copeland, the drummer and founder of rock giants The Police, and arguably the slickest hi-hat player on the planet.

    Copeland’s score certainly adds a filmic quality to the production, undoubtedly aided by years of experience on movie soundtracks and in opera (see following page). He also narrated the London shows, providing English translation for the Latin- and Aramaic-speaking cast members.

    I sat in the front row, bang in the middle of the arena for the performance. I could smell the action just as easily as I could see it, and from the opening scene I was glued. Copeland had a profound presence on stage and narrated the show impeccably.

    Unsurprisingly, his outstanding score worked brilliantly throughout. It was an emotional rollercoaster: hugely exciting and powerful during the vast array of battle scenes, exceptionally poignant at pivotal moments (not least the finale where Judah Ben Hur pledged his allegiance to Jesus of Nazareth — what a crescendo!) and had a real dark side up its sleeve when called upon.

    I was hugely impressed with the sound and lighting. The cast also showed great personality, contrary to several inaccurate press reviews I read. Standout performances included leading actors Sebastian Thrun and Michael Knese (Judah Ben Hur and Messala) and leading actress Lili Gesler (Esther).

    Costumes, designed by New York-based Ann Hould-Ward, were excellent; the Roman soldiers looked particularly realistic and menacing when marching side by side across stage.

    To summarise, the show was a total spectacle and a pleasure to watch. Abraham’s long-time vision, combined with a team of experts in their respective fields, proved to be the perfect recipe for a truly groundbreaking production.
TPi