Following a successful two-year run in London’s West End, The Commitments, directed by Caroline Jay Ranger, has taken to the road for the first time, carrying with it an MDG Atmosphere haze generator. The eight month tour will take in 26 venues across the UK and, for the first time ever, travel to its ‘home’ town of Dublin.
Based on the BAFTA award-winning film and featuring 20 soul classics, The Commitments is a feel good celebration which follows Roddy Doyle’s story of a mismatched bunch of young musicians who come together to become ‘the finest soul band Dublin has ever produced.’
Helping to conjure up the smoke-laden party atmosphere of 1980’s Dublin clubs and pubs in which they play is a single MDG Atmosphere haze generator, specified by Lighting Designer, Jon Clark, who is a great advocate of MDG. A second Atmosphere is toured as a contingency.
“I’ve always used MDG machines on my shows as no other machine on the market produces that quality of haze,” says Clark. “We used an MDG Atmosphere on the West End show and, as the scale of the tour is equal to the original West End production, we were determined to maintain our standards by keeping this industry-standard workhorse on the tour.”
One Atmosphere is sufficient to provide the perfect balance of haze for whole stage during this busy show, and is controlled directly, via DMX, from the ETC Eos desk. MDG designs it machines to be reliable, economical on fluid and quiet – not that noise levels were a particular requirement on this upbeat, energetic show! The Atmosphere’s durability has not gone unnoticed by the tour’s chief electrician, Callum Humphries, who is very happy with Clark’s choice: “When you have the challenges of a winter/spring tour, the last thing you need is equipment that demands constant attention,” he said. “I’m also a lover of MDG product and it’s great to know our haze requirements are provided by a generator that, you can be confident, will perform happily for the duration of the tour, wherever we take it. We are three months into the tour and the machines are still in great condition!
“For our CO2 requirements we have worked closely with Gassed Up (on recommendation from MDG UK’s Matt Wiseman) who supplied us with the ideal sized bottles at all the dates and locations on our tour schedule. People have the impression that touring with compressed CO2 is difficult, but I’ve worked extensively with MDG products on tour and, once I’d cleared it with the trucking company and venues, it simply wasn’t a problem. And the advantages of using a reliable, quality product like MDG on a heavy production like this far out-weigh the perceived disadvantages.”
The MDG Atmosphere and fluids were supplied by the tour’s lighting supplier, White Light.
