Hit BBC show Mrs Brown’s Boys has spent much of 2015 on a major UK and Ireland arena tour, with residencies in 12 cities. Although the roots of Brendan O’Carroll’s sitcom lay in a theatre production from1999, the size of venues on the current tour has meant that production company Adlib required a major Coda Audio system to handle the sound.
Taking in arenas in Belfast, Birmingham, Cardiff, Dublin, Glasgow, Leeds, Liverpool, London, Manchester, Newcastle, Nottingham and Sheffield, the How Now Mrs Brown Cow tour saw Adlib working with O’Carroll and his team – and, having used Coda systems on previous tours, they did so again for the current shows.
The production is tailor-made to suit each arena, ensuring that audiences enjoy optimum performance. Because of this, the straightforward scalability and seamless coverage of Coda systems is a particular benefit: ‘We have used Coda systems on a number of Mrs Brown tours, and they have always delivered great sound,’ says Adlib tour Technical Production Manager, Kevin Byatt.
Engineer Kenny Perrin has worked with the tours for more than a decade, mixing both front-of-house and monitors from the FOH position. He has a lot of experience of mixing comedy and knows how crucial it is to have a PA system that delivers exceptional sonic clarity, to ensure the pristine delivery of jokes and punchlines. ‘Coda is absolutely brilliant for vocal clarity and definition,’ he says.
For this tour, a typical set-up uses main hangs of 14 Coda LA12s and three ViRay underhangs per side, plus two additional sidehang arrays of 14 ViRay, each paired with four groundstacked Coda subs. A centre cluster of four ViRay fills the mid stalls, while two delay hangs of six ViRay per side are flown approximately half way down the venue, to ensure the vocal gets right to the back of the room and the system maintain even levels throughout.
With a lot of playback, spot effects and a great deal of cast ad-libbing in each show, mixing the perfect sound can be a challenge, but the Coda system is ensuring that not a word is missed by the sold-out audiences: ‘It’s a fantastic tour for Adlib, the show is highly entertaining and very funny,’ Byatt says. ‘We have a really fluid dialogue with everyone involved in the production side, they trust us implicitly to deliver the best technical specs and very highest production standards.’
