Taking place at The Vaults beneath Waterloo Station, Rhythm and Ruse offered theatregoers the ultimate immersive night of magic, music and revelry. Harkening back to the prohibition era, the show took place in a ‘Speakeasy’ and allowed audiences to experience astounding close-up illusions from mere inches away, live music from a four-piece jazz band, a secret society of magicians devised by immersive theatre experts as well as food and drink across the entire evening. The show featured a lighting design by up-and-coming designer Skylar Turnbull Hurd, with this being her first time lighting a show of this scale and with a full LX team. With its strong reputation for both supporting young lighting designers, as well as supplying immersive theatrical productions, White Light (WL), a d&b solutions company, was called upon to provide the show’s lighting fixtures.

The aim of Rhythm and Ruse was to offer London theatregoers a truly unique experience, in that from the minute they entered The Vaults, they stepped back in time to the 1920s and into ‘The Starling’ night-club where the immersive action takes place. Skylar explains: “I would describe this show as a single window that looks directly into a dolls house. There’s something going on everywhere in one collective swoop, but, on a miniature level, there’s so many subworlds and little hidden treasures. It was a case of audiences ‘not knowing where to look’ and they quickly made it an endeavour to try and experience them all!”.

Given there were so many different elements to the show, how did this impact Skylar’s lighting design? She answers: “My creative lighting brief was to help create a bubble that patrons unexpectedly found themselves in, perhaps without even realising. The content had to be rich, but also timeless and not dictate the flow – we wanted a safe space that audience members could relax in and feel free to explore”.

With this being her brief, when it came to the practicalities of her rig, Skylar knew she needed a lighting structure that could support all of the show’s numerous intricacies. She explains: “The cast, band members, set list and staffing was intended to rotate often, and so lighting could not dictate or complicate this further. We also had to ensure that all seven different areas of the tunnel space remained lit at all times. And whilst I indeed had to pay attention to the multiple spaces, it was actually the requirements of a whole spectrum of different necessities which forced me to see the whole show as one wider experience; as opposed to something that starts and ends at the wings of the stage.

She continues: “I initially thought the show was going to be quite complex, with lots of snap cues and set electrics, though these turned out to be quite distracting ideas. Similarly, I thought I would need to use a lot of different colours to echo the cabaret style feeling of the show and keep the audience entertained, but discovered that I could maintain a colour narrative through different saturations of a limited colour palette instead. This is the type of show, given its nature, that truly comes alive when you have people within the space. As such, it was only during previews when we had the 16 tables of 12 people inside that I really saw how my design worked – which then gave me the opportunity to make tweaks before press night and the ‘official’ opening”.

Throughout this entire process, Skylar was working closely with the WL team who supplied her lighting rig. She explains: “In terms of the actual fixtures used, we had MAC Quantum Washes and Profiles overhead, which were distributed across the space. We also had overhead LED ColourSource Specials for each table. These three fixture types gave a lot of flexibility to the different looks of the show, especially as it was staged in thrust. 

On the stage iself, we had ColorBlaze LED Battens shining through the outstretched wings structure at the back and uplighting the beautiful velvet backdrop. Around this, we had birdies glowing the performers but also keeping the movement around the stage dynamic as the cast moved between them.

She continues: “Through the entrance to the space and Front of House, we had ETC LED Source Four Minis. The main area was very glowy with tungsten, and these cooler fixtures offered a nice contrast to this; refreshing the audiences’ eyes before spending the evening inside. One of the reasons I believe we managed to accommodate all of the different styles within the show was by being consistent with what our cue structure was; managed by my sterling Associate Lighting Designer Abigail Sage. Our cue lists were entirely operated and controlled from Qlab, and how she took time and care to ensure our show file was fool-proof was absolutely brilliant”.

Following rave reviews and having dazzled audiences, Rhythm and Ruse’s run at The Vaults came to a close last month.

Skylar concludes: “This was a very unique show and one which I loved working on and taught me so much as a designer. I would love to say a huge thank you to the whole team from the cast to the magicians to the performers to the whole FOH and to the crew; especially Dominic Cook, our Lead Production Electrician, and his brilliant staff. I’d also like to say thank you again to WL for supplying my first ever large-scale production and being a huge support throughout the entire process”.

Contact our Hire team for any further information 020 8254 4800.

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