Dramatising the historic romance between Count Axel de Fersen and French Queen Marie-Antoinette, Japanese Takarazuka Revue all-female musical theatre troupe staged The Rose of Versailles recently. Written and directed by Shinji Ueda, and directed by Masazumi Tani, the production used a Martin Audio MLA Mini from local rental company Woody Land for sound reinforcement.
Woody Land ground-stacked eight cabinets above two MSX subwoofers, on each side of the stage at the Tokyo Tarazuka Theatre as the main reinforcement. The design enabled the system to achieve intelligibility at FOH, under the balcony and the top row seats on the second floor.
The latest model in Martin Audio’s multicellular family, MLA Mini uniquely provides the ability to connect a PC directly to the system via a USB port on the MSX sub. This eliminates the need for the network racks that the larger MLA and MLA Compact systems require. There is a USB to Ethernet adaptor available as an accessory that can then be used to connect to a wi-fi network to enable wireless connection from a PC at FOH to the system. Because it is self-powered, the space normally occupied by the amp racks on stage has been reclaimed – a particular benefit in the staging of a musical.
‘MLA Mini is fantastic because of the consistency of the sound throughout the venue – from the front row to the end,’ Woody Land sound engineer Kurashige-san explains. ‘It is also nice that we can change the directivity of the array – not physically but electronically – using different parameters, even though the rehearsal may have already begun.’
The Takarazuka Revue is a Japanese all-female musical theatre troupe based in Japan’s Hyogo Prefecture, which was founded a century ago by Ichizo Kobayashi, then president of Hankyu Railways. At the time of founding, it was the first all-female company in Japan, marking a rection to the traditional all-male kabuki. Today, it operates two of its own threatres, staging works taken from manga and Japanese folk tales, as well as classic Western theatre, taking the Rose of Versailles from its first success in 1974, to celebrate its landmark year.
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