Unusual Rigging has a long standing relationship with The London Palladium going back to Oliver!, Saturday Night Fever, The King and I and now Chitty, Chitty, Bang, Bang. The physical constraints of the building in relation to the requirements of Chitty were more or less a known quantity. Ultimately, the unique test for Unusual would be the available amount of time between the final performance of The King and I and the first stage rehearsal for Chitty.
The load out crews were standing by to start work immediately following curtain down on The King and I and the show was out by the end of the following Wednesday. From the beginning of Thursday, Unusual were operating two crews simultaneously to prepare the venue for Chitty. One team under the supervision of Simon Stone looked after the stage rigging for the show, including the installation and re-positioning of diverters to maximise the efficiency of the stage grid. At the same time, the crew of engineering based specialists under production engineer Simon Tiernan had the onerous task of removing the glass dome above the auditorium as well as the enormous stage revolve.
Working simultaneous crews in the same space involved an innovative solution from Unusual. A mother grid of telestage truss, covered with debris netting was installed over the entire stage area at fly floor height. I beam roller systems enabled the engineering crew to lift the revolve steelwork out and track it our through the dock doors. In the meantime, the rigging crew were on the main stage grid preparing it for flying the show. As soon as the revolve was out and the new modular stage was in, the mothergrid was removed and the process of flying the show started. The engineering crew then moved on to the removal of the glass dome and the installation of the ‘child catchers’ platform.
The concept of instigating a double decker work area over the stage saved as much as a week on the overall fit-up period and will probably feature heavily in future West End changeovers.
The rigging end engineering crews came together for the show installation. The pièce de resistance, the car itself, was lowered into the basement through an opening, which was revealed in the modular stage. The mechanical infrastructure for the car included a 4.75 tonne hydraulic arm, which was lowered in with the use of chain hoists rigged from the roof structure.
Once the flown elements of the show were in place, scenic elements started to arrive. Wherever possible, the flying storage platforms used in The King and I were recycled, but inevitably, some had to be repositioned and some new ones were made. The original fly floor is now largely covered with a bewildering array of winches and diverters for storage platforms, whilst a new ‘temporary’ floor, which is a couple of feet above the original fly floor, is now used as the working fly floor.
Such is the scale of Chitty, the cubic capacity of storage space in the grid and above the wings exceeds any previous show in the theatre, whilst remaining within the critical 30 tonne weight limit of the wallframe of The Palladium.
