At the end of last year, White Light, a d&b solutions company, supplied the lighting on Cy Baby at The Royal Academy of Music. The show was a celebration of the work of legendary theatre composer Cy Coleman, whose notable work includes Barnum, On the Twentieth Century, City of Angels and Sweet Charity. The lighting designer was Charlie Morgan Jones who has written a blog about what it was like to work on the piece and his approach to doing so:

Every year at Christmas, The Royal Academy of Music asks veteran director, and font of all musical theatre knowledge, Matt Ryan to create a show based around a musical composer for their MA Students.  For the last three years, I’ve been lucky enough to collaborate closely with him on each of these.

When I started in 2021, the composer of choice was Jerry Herman (Hello, Dolly!, La Cage aux Folles).  In 2022 it was Kander & Ebb (Chicago, Cabaret).  This year, it was decided that we celebrate Cy Coleman, whose works stretch from the circus-themed Barnum and Sweet Charity’s Big Spender to jazz standards like Witchcraft and The Best Is Yet To Come.

On every one of these shows I’ve worked on, there’s never been a set design per se, so I’ve always tried to put physical lights in the space to define and sculpt it.

In April ’23, when I was officially asked to light the latest show, I put to the Academy and Matt that, given the past few years, I would like to explore the ’Stage Design’ credit as well as Lighting. They were amicable, and I put together a sheet for how each scene might look. Thankfully, they liked it!

Ultimately, with the incomparable genius of RAM’s Technical Director, Liam Rudd, we came up with 3x Portals of lamps that floated 100mm off the floor and moved vertically and horizontally, giving us the chance to create loads of different stage pictures, serving each song and section as best possible.

Which lamps, I hear you all clamour…?  It’s me – it’s going to be something tungsten and sexy!  We opted for 101 x ETC Source Four PARs with a narrow spot.

A few months before we began the two week rehearsal process, Matt and I met for an afternoon and worked through the show deciding where things could be placed for each moment. 14 days isn’t really enough time for excess creativity in the room with such flexible parameters so the advance decision making was essential.

We rehearsed in a space one fifth the size of the stage, and Rocai (from Team RAM) furnished the room team with booms on wheels to get everyone used to the stage picture.  It was (to put it mildly) not easy; the poor cast often stepping on our toes mid-tap number!  I’m lucky I can still figure skate.

After 14 gruelling days of rehearsals, it was into tech.  The RAM techs are intense!  They’re always ambitious, with only ever just enough time to get it done.  They can be thrilling, and if everyone’s on their A-game, utter magic.

Having never created an entire space, I wasn’t quite sure how the whole world would look, but it worked well – the girls leaning on the bar for Big Spender and the City of Angels forced perspective portals looked fab.  Add to that the ’telegraph poles’ for the deep south and the open portals for genuine showbiz and we had a show!

I genuinely feel like I couldn’t be luckier – these shows at RAM are one of the greatest creative outlets I have.  Matt is the most generous, most outrageous, funniest director.  Coupled with the excellent team around me including astonishing programmer – Ryan Dunnett (who will be far too busy to work on my shows in the near future!) and Caitlin Shay who calls cues like nobody else I’ve worked with – what could be a better kick start to Christmas?

As ever, I am enormously grateful to White Light and their constant support and making this pipe dream of a show happen!

Team:

Liam Rudd – Head of Production
Gary Landick – Head of Lighting
Rocai Millmore – Head of Automation
Charlie Morgan Jones – Lighting and Stage Designer
Yann Rigotti – Associate Lighting Designer
Ryan Dunnett – Lighting Programmer
Nicole Parker – Followspot Operator
Adam Wileman, Paul Salmon and Tom Shackleton – Productions Electricians
Craig Fuller and Rocai Milmore – Photos

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