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The Bright Lights of Broadway are Scharff Weisberg's
"'night, Mother" and "Dame Edna: Back With a Vengeance!" Feature Packages From Scharff Weisberg Lighting
January 10, 2005 — New York
Scharff Weisberg Lighting made its Broadway debut by supplying complete lighting packages to the revival of Marsha Norman's Pulitzer Prize-winning "'night, Mother" at the Royale Theatre and Barrie Humphries's uproarious "Dame Edna: Back With a Vengeance!" at the Music Box Theatre.
Starring "The Sopranos" Edie Falco and two-time Academy Award nominee Brenda Blethyn, "'night, Mother" is a portrait of a family in crisis. Scharff Weisberg Lighting provided the drama with 146 ETC Source 4 ellipsoidals, City Theatrical Auto Yokes to automate the Source 4s, two 96x2.4 dimmer racks, and an ETC Obsession II dual-processorconsole with video nodes.
"The play happens in a farm house in real time with no transitions, so the lighting needs to be very natural and enhance the show while being completely unobtrusive," explains lighting designer Brian MacDevitt who is a four-time Tony Award nominee and a Tony winner for "Into The Woods." MacDevitt also has "Pacific Overtures" on Broadway, a revival of "Sweet Charity" upcoming and is co-designing the musical "Good Vibrations."
He notes that "'night, Mother" "is probably the sparest show I've done on Broadway. Everything takes place on a stage lit with source lighting in the living room and a big fluorescent light, also from Scharff Weisberg, in the kitchen. The audience sees the kitchen light turn off and the attic light turn on but the other close to 100 cues are seamless; they envelope the actors and keep the focus on them."
MacDevitt uses the Auto Yokes to create a moving-car headlight effect. "It's a tiny touch to give a sense of how remote their house is," he says. "The headlight comes up in one window, pans across another and fades out as if the car were about 100 yard away."
"Scharff Weisberg filled my lighting needs perfectly; I have a lot of trust in them," MacDevitt concludes. Roy Gabay Productions is the general manager of "'night, Mother."
"Dame Edna: Back With a Vengeance!" is the polar opposite of the stark and simple "'night, Mother." The glitzy, almost vaudeville-style production stars Barry Humphries as his drag alter ego Dame Edna Everage, the incomparable international housewife, megastar and guru. Humphries netted a 2000 Tony Award for "Dame Edna: The Royal Tour."
The new show opened in San Francisco with a complete package from Scharff Weisberg Lighting then moved to Broadway with a similar equipment complement: 225 ETC Source 4 ellipsoidals, 28 MR16 strip lights, 12 MR11 nanostrips, 4 VL1000AS moving lights, 44 Wybron color rams, 2 Lycian follow spots, 6 TPR fiber-optic illuminators, an ETC Obsession controller and an ETC Sensor dimmer rack.
"This is my first Broadway show," says lighting designer Jane Cox who hails from the non-profit theater arena. "A lot of things are new to me, and Scharff Weisberg has been wonderful with their help and support. It's been the best experience!"
A Scharff Weisberg technician flew to San Francisco to help deploy the prototypes of the latest-generation fiber-optic illuminators which get the show off to a splashy start. The production opens with Dame Edna flying onto the bridge of a 22-foot set piece of her signature winged victory eyeglasses. "Thousands of points of fiber optics glimmer, twinkle, flash and change color in her glasses," Cox explains. "It really makes the beginning of the show."
The fiber-optic illuminators are also woven into urns of Dame Edna's favorite gladioli so the floral arrangements sparkle and change hues.
Tiny sections of the nanostrips were built into the cornice piece of the set to light the curtain from the top and set up chases and other lighting effects. "People were skeptical about getting this to work, but I thought we needed a way to light the drop from above," Cox says.
"It was a complicated piece of engineering by Scharff Weisberg, the scene shop and Craig Aves, our head electrician, but it worked just great."
Colleen Houlehen at Tech Productions is the technical supervisor for "Dame Edna: Back With a Vengeance!"
Scharff Weisberg Lighting provides state-of-the-art lighting equipment for rental or as part of a complete package of AV equipment and support. For more information, call 212-582-3860.