Beautiful - The Carol King Musical 2015

Client: Matt Towell
Scope: Installation of heavy duty truss
View at: www.beautifulinlondon.co.uk
With 12 tonnes of show and less than seven tonnes of capacity, Matt Towell asked Unusual Rigging to enable London's Aldwych Theatre to carry Beautiful - The Carol King Musical. Within just two weeks, Unusual had transformed the empty theatre into a completed set in time for technical rehearsals. Unusual:
 
  • designed three runs of heavy duty truss running cross-stage below the grid level to support over four tonnes
  • fixed trusses semi-permanently into the wall of the building on stage right, using large gallows brackets held in with 50 chemical anchors
  • installed two further beams to ensure the wall and fly door structure acted together rather than independently to provide the strength required
  • further established the roof structure, enabling it to take the remaining eight tonnes by fitting strengthening channels to the underside of the grid pallet, while extra bracing was also added to the one and only steel beam in the fly tower to prevent this from buckling under the load
  • installed 12 sets of diverts, 40 metres of spreader beams, 30 drops and reeved several kilometres of steel wire rope in five days, so that the flying could commence at the start of week two.

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