Bruno Poet uses over 100 impression X5 Wash, X5 Compact, X5 IP Bars and JDC1 on West End show
When the highly anticipated stage version of the blockbuster film The Devil Wears Prada debuted in Chicago in the summer of 2022, it was to mixed reviews.
By the time it arrived in London’s West End at the end of 2024 it was with an entirely fresh production, including a new creative team and an original score from Elton John.
Paule Constable, who lit the show in Chicago, had praised GLP’s then newly launched impression X5 washlight. And when equally acclaimed, multi-disciplined LD Bruno Poet took over the reins in the UK, he went even further – specifying around 120 GLP fixtures across the entire impression X5 Series, punctuated by JDC1 hybrid strobes.
Poet has been a devotee of GLP’s LED solutions for a number of years, making expansive use of their X4 Series, notably the award-winning Bars (on the highly-acclaimed Sigur Rós tour and Tina: The Musical). He used the impression X4 washes again on The Devil Wears Prada’s pre-West End warm-up shows in Plymouth. However, he was keen to upgrade these to the impression X5 Compacts for the West End and managed to persuade vendor PRG to invest in the new units (with 69 X5 Compact replacing the earlier X4).
“The X5 Compacts have more punch and I like the fact that the entire X5 Series has the lime chip, so that the colours I missed with the X4 are now completely possible. It’s made a huge difference,” he says. Finally, and equally importantly, the absence of loud fan noise, so often present on other LED heads, made the X5 Compact a game-changer and underlined the necessity, even in musicals, for scripted dialogue to be heard, the LD adds: “There are spoken scenes and also quiet moments in music, and what you don’t want is for the quiet moments to be filled with the sound of 80 moving lights.”
Bruno Poet has turned the marrying of loud, large ensemble musicals with sensitively scripted dialogue into an art form. “In my career I’ve been fortunate to work in touring music but also theatre, opera and musicals. I’ve drawn on skills I’ve learnt from all those different genres and put them together on this musical,” he continues.
Having worked with set designer Tim Hatley previously, he was fortunate to have been given a blank canvas, and become involved early in the creative process, “looking at how lights and scenery could work together, in terms of lighting positions.” Working within a broad framework of the New York and Paris skylines, a series of portals mask the majority of the overhead rig; however, the impression X5 Compacts are rigged in two arches framing the forestage, and since they are in view for the entire time, they had to look clean and neat. Poet needed versatile lighting fixtures, with a colour palette that would deliver accurate skin tones, flatter the costume colours and stage dynamics with the same fidelity – and GLP obliged.
For sightline reasons, the layout of the large, 2,100-cap. Dominion Theatre, with its prominent Circle overhang, precluded the use of a classic catwalk thrust into the stalls, and this has been replaced by an oval track running around the forestage.
“We built a false proscenium to close it in a bit and within that we created these two very strong lighting positions containing the X5 Compacts,” explains Bruno Poet. “This gave the sense of those repeated lights you normally get above catwalks in fashion shows. It gave me the opportunity to create both Elton John rock’n’roll lighting and provide some great lighting angles for the spoken scenes, which is very much part of the show’s aesthetic.”
The arches support the X5 Compacts, one upstage and one downstage in clusters of three. These line the pros, and are interspersed with 12 JDC1 hybrid strobes. In the absence of video, these lighting arrays become visually extremely dominant. The strobes mimic the camera flash effects of a fashion parade, at the same time providing powerful strobe hits to punctuate musical moments.
The impressive zoom range of the impression X5 wash, rigged in clusters overhead, provided the designer with a further bonus, he continues: “The X5s are used for directional fingers of light, but are also used when zoomed out to their widest to backlight some translucent scenic sliders that close down the stage at times. I wanted a flexible light that would zoom very wide and deliver big colours to backlight these sliders but at the same time go narrow for more ‘beamy’ moments in the show.”
The impression X5 IP Bars are used as the main backlight wash for the show. “What I love with these is the haze in the air provides a big block of colour wash, without lots of ‘triangles’ appearing in the haze that you sometimes get,” says Poet. “These are used in nearly every scene.”
The downstage line of battens is flown into view for one of the fashion show moments. “It becomes much more present as an architectural feature,” he adds. The X5s are used for particularly dramatic effect in the final catwalk scene: “They do a big tilt upwards, producing a dramatic sheet of light passing over the heads of the audience.”
The GLP fixtures are pretty crucial to the overall dynamic,” Bruno Poet concludes. “I must say, I like GLP’s new products, and between the X5 Compacts, X5 standard washes, JDC1s and the X5 IP Bars we’ve made pretty comprehensive use.”
Reviewing the production, he says: “Overall I’m extremely pleased with the way the lighting supports the show – the rig does everything I hoped it would do to deliver intimate dialogue scenes, big colourful musical numbers, clean sharp fashion shows and big beamy rock concert looks.”
Also in the LD’s team are Max Narula (programmer), Tamykha Patterson (associate lighting designer) and Ian Moulds and Sam House (production electricians), brilliantly supported by Stuart Plume and his team at the Dominion. The show is directed by Jerry Mitchell.