Static over Theater Sound

By Gerald Clarke

Intimacy is fading, but shows are hooked on mikes and speakers

"Speak the speech, I pray you, trippingly from the tongue," Hamlet advised actors. But that was in the days before body mikes, when a performer would be hooted off the stage if the groundlings could not hear what he was saying. Now, thanks to what is euphemistically known as "sound reinforcement," a whisper can carry as far as a shout, and a clear, powerful voice, once mandatory equipment for a stage actor, is almost superfluous. Sound technicians receive prominent billing in Broadway shows, right next to set and costume designers, and the theater, which got along quite well for 2,500 years without electronics, thank you, is all but hooked on microphones and speakers.

Though a few musical shows were amplified in the '50s, the practice did not become established until the '60s, gaining momentum with the success of two electronically hyped rock musicals, Hair and Jesus Christ Superstar. Today no musical would open without a soundman ringing the decibels. The Pirates of Penzance has 42 microphones scattered around the stage in Manhattan's huge Minskoff Theater. The sound system of Dreamgirls is so complicated that when Soundman Otts Munderloh sits down at his control console, he looks as if he could be managing the landing of a space shuttle from the Houston Space Center. Costs have gone up with the voltage. In 1964, Fiddler on the Roof used a sound system that cost $5,800. Dreamgirls' tweeters, woofers and assorted other paraphernalia could not be purchased for less than $250,000.

Most plays without music still depend on the unaided human voice. But even they are sometimes amplified. Such recent shows as Agnes of God and The Little Foxes have used mikes, as have Neil Simon comedies. "Conventional sound no longer satisfies people," says Producer Alexander Cohen. "They want to go to the theater and see and hear everything. At 40 bucks a shot, they deserve it."

Unfortunately, there are many reasons for the switch to electronics onstage. Many of the new houses are so big and poorly designed that an actor would have to bellow to be heard in the balcony. Some, like the Uris, where Annie is now playing, have such bad acoustics that, without a little help, even a foghorn would sound like a wheeze to someone sitting in the back row. There seems in fact to be a conspiracy to drown out the voice. Some composers have turned from strings and woodwinds to ever louder brasses and electronic instruments. Even Ethel Merman, who has the strongest pipes in the business, might find it impossible to make herself heard over the electronic thunder of a musical like Evita.

Producers claim that audiences have changed too. "TV has spoiled a great number of us," says Producer Zev Bufman. "If we don't hear perfectly, we've just got to reach over and turn it up." Says Producer Hal Prince: "When I first came into the theater, I remember seeing the Lunts, who had wonderful projection and spoke with crystal clarity. But it still took about five minutes before you made the adjustment to hear them properly. Today the public won't do that. People walk around with those Walkman sets on their ears. We've all become very lazy."

There probably would be less complaint if amplification were not so apparent--and so annoying. But it usually is both. The sound system of the 1978 Eartha Kitt musical Timbuktu! sounded like a tinny radio with failing batteries. The Pirates of Penzance, which has a better system, is nonetheless obviously miked. Then there are the mistakes that give soundmen high-volume nightmares. When Dreamgirls opened, an actor's body microphone jammed another, set on the same frequency, in a neighboring theater, where The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas was playing. (A wireless body mike, hidden on a performer's costume, is in effect a tiny radio, broadcasting to a receiver offstage.) And everyone in the business remembers the time one actress forgot to turn off her mike when she went backstage. The audience was treated to a few obscenities and the electronically enhanced sound of a toilet flushing.

Even when a sound system is good, it destroys the intimacy between actors and audience, which is, after all, the essence of theater. Cyril Harris, an acoustical consultant for the Metropolitan Opera House, Avery Fisher Hall and Washington's Kennedy Center, maintains that despite what many producers claim, audiences really prefer their sound straight and unaided. "If you give audiences a choice between a large amplified house and a smaller unamplified house, they'll take the latter every time," he says. "People know that what they are hearing in a large house isn't realistic. An amplified voice is different not only in terms of level but in terms of quality. There's no way you can fool the public."

Microphones probably are necessary in some of the new barns that pass for theaters, and doubtless are needed in some rock musicals. But many producers and actors have enough love for the theater to resist their use in straight plays. "Vocal training is part of the craft, and it is up to the actor, not the soundman, to reach those people in the back row," adds James Earl Jones, who is doing just that as the jealous Moor in the current Broadway production of Othello. "You can project not just with volume, but with clarity and unexpected variations in rhythm. It all boils down to this: If you're going to amplify sound, why not have people stay at home and watch TV?"

--By Gerald Clarke.

Reported by Elaine Dutka/New York

With reporting by Elaine Dutka

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