On Sunday 8th Oct 2023 ex-Pink Floyd star Roger Waters premiered ‘Dark Side of the Moon Redux’ across two nights at The London Palladium. A reworking of the band’s most celebrated album which turned 50 in 2023, the two intimate live performances were designed specifically to fit the historic 2,286 capacity theatre.
The last time Waters played London was at the O2 Arena, for his 2022-3 ‘This Is Not A Drill’ tour, which featured our giant cross stage and awe-inspiring visuals. Working with the same trusted team, which included Sean Evans (creative director), Pryderi Baskerville (lighting designer), Icarus Wilson-Wright (video director) and Chris Kansy (production manager), we were excited to embrace a much simpler format for Dark Side Redux.
The concept for this one-off show was to go back to basics, which required a completely different approach. Responsible for the technical design and coordination, Wonder Works director, Jeremy Lloyd took Sean’s design and worked with Pryderi to develop something simple yet visually impactful for the iconic London venue.
The centrepiece for this retrospective show was a giant prism which sat in front of the safety curtain and protruded out over the front rows of the stalls. Featuring 45 meters of LED strips and holding 25 moving lights, this impressive design filled the space and made the audience feel like part of the show. Using standard truss, Wonder Works designed custom corners for the structure in order to create the correct shape triangle. We also designed custom brackets to hold the LED strips that were suspended from the truss. The lighting system, rigging equipment, custom truss corners and brackets were all supplied by the brilliant Neg Earth Lights.
Projection scrims were installed on the theatre fly bars to be used as a canvas for storytelling. The semi-transparent scrims dropped either side of the prism and could be lifted to reveal the 14-piece band that performed at the back of the stage. Projected onto the scrims were bold graphics depicting Waters’ spoken words as well as a 19-minute film which played before the band took their places. Jeremy Lloyd said:
“It was refreshing to produce something totally different for Dark Side Redux, but with the same trusted team. The whole show was not typically Roger Waters, which was a fittingly symbolic way to celebrate his remake of a masterpiece, five decades on.”
Rogers Waters’ performed Dark Side Redux at the London Palladium on the 8th & 9th October 2023, delivering an intimate show that goldradiouk describes as “…nothing short of mesmerising.”
CREDITS:
Sean Evans – Creative Director, Pryderi Baskerville – Lighting Director, Icarus Wilson-Wright – Video Director, Sean ‘Sully’ Sullivan – Sound Engineer, Chris Kansy – Production Manager, David Hall – Stage Manager, Dave ‘Dash’ Rowe – Head Rigger, Wayne Hall – Audio System Engineer, David Lancini – Lighting Crew Chief, Ellie Clement – Media Server Programmer, Neg Earth Lights – Lighting, Clair Global/Britannia Row – Audio, Universal Pixels – Video, ShowTex – Projection Scrims
