Four days of public theatre that saw the return of the Royal De Luxe giant marionettes to the streets of Liverpool for a weekend of history, poignancy and entertainment. Memories of August 1914 commemorated the centenary of the start of the First World War, highlighting the ‘Liverpool Pals’, who answered Kitchener’s call for volunteers.

The event pulled an estimated one million people into downtown Liverpool for one of the most successful ever public arts events staged in the UK. Adlib provided sound systems for the seven main performance sites around the city centre.

The sites all accommodated crowds of between 10,000 and 40,000, who needed to hear the performance soundtrack clearly from all positions as the Giants moved around the city along a predetermined route.

It was, a vast logistical operation for Adlib, which was co-ordinated by Director Phil Stoker and involved 16 Adlib technicians. Stoker worked closely with event Technical Manager Stu Stalker and Production Manager Jonathan Sims.

The audio systems were co-designed by Adlib’s Tony Szabo and Royal De Luxe’s Sound Designer, Stephane Brosse, and were based around ether L-Acoustics or Coda loudspeaker systems. Frequently, this required the systems to be struck from one site in order to leapfrog ahead of the procession to the next location. At first stop at St George’s Hall, Adlib installed an L-Acoustics K2 system, comprising 11 speakers-a-side flown from Adlib’s new Prolyte PA towers, complete with Lake processing/control and a Soundcraft Vi1 console.

At Newsham Park, one of the largest sites for audience numbers, attracting crowds of around 40,000, Adlib installed two hangs of L-Acoustics K1, with ten speakers per hang flown off 40-tonne tower cranes and more Lake/Soundcraft control. Clarence Dock was catered for with another K1 system on cranes and attracted another 10,000 people or so.

For Mann Island, the Metropolitan Cathedral and Queensway Tunnel, all the PA systems were rigged on the back of two flatbed Hiab crane trucks for quick deployment. They arrived on the sites and elevated the arrays just ahead of the Giants arriving to play out their scene.  The Hiabs were each loaded with 12 Coda LA12 speakers and Soundcraft SI compact mixers. In all cases the audio signals from the music/band truck accompanying the giant marionette cast of three characters – the Little Girl, the Grandmother and Xolo the dog – as they moved around town were beamed via RF link over to the Adlib systems at each of the stopping points.

For the finalé at Canning Dock, the entire Waterfront was closed and the Giants moved onto the water in boats, which sailed off down the Mersey River in a wave of smoke and emotion for the end. This entailed a fast set-up of a hang of 20 deep K1 elements from a three-axle mobile tower crane to be hung at the edge of the water to throw sound to the road directly in front. The side coverage was 180m to the first person. This had to be done and ready in four hours from the crane arriving on site to the Giants performing. The soundtrack was mixed through one of Adlib’s DiGiCo SD10 consoles.

‘As a Liverpool company, we were all extremely proud to be part of this event which did so much to capture the public imagination and I’m sure inspire many people who might not go to a conventional theatre show – to be part of the performance,’ Phil Stoker states.

He adds that it wasn’t so much the actual sound systems that were the challenge in this case as the technical requirements for these were relatively straightforward: ‘It was the logistics that were the galvanising part.’

See also;
14-18 Spektakel