Theatre: Brush up your Shakespeare

Ears were being pricked up yesterday at the shock news that actors performing in the National Theatre's Olivier auditorium are now required to wear radio microphones.

The most astonishing thing about this story is that this technological "advance" has been established practice in this venue for at least 18 months. This either means that actors there have been barred from discussing it (deeply unlikely) or that there is more to this story than meets the ear.

The idea of using electronic gadgetry to compensate for poor vocal technique goes against everything the profession holds sacred. Directors who refuse to go "on the record" - like actors, they want to work at the National in the future - have expressed outrage at the idea. The actor's voice, they rightly argue, is at the heart of dramatic expression.

Learning to breathe properly to project the voice, and combining that with clarity of diction in order to "hit the back wall", is central to an actor's training. Is it really time to say goodbye to all that, as would appear to be the case with the news that the cast of Trevor Nunn's production of Troilus and Cressida are wired for sound? Miking up a singer forced to compete with the amplified sound of a rock band in a musical is one thing, but Shakespeare?

It was in fact Nunn's predecessor Richard Eyre who began this. He temporarily closed the Olivier to redesign it for an in-the-round season in 1997 and at the same time fitted the System for Improved Acoustic Performance (SIAP)

As the National's sound designer Paul Groothuis explains, this system, installed around the walls, manipulates the sound. "It has nothing to do with intelligibility. It merely corrects the acoustical acoustical problems of the Olivier."

Nearly every theatre in the country has dead spots and the vast Olivier is no exception. Even the most perfectly produced voice cannot be easily heard from certain parts of the auditorium. If you clap or say a word you produce an echo. In the Olivier, the reverberation from the initial sound tends to drown out the echo thus muddying the effect. You cannot reduce the echo but SIAP clarifies the effect by enhancing the proportions of the latter sound.

The admittedly convincing argument runs that it is no longer good enough to pretend that there is no problem with the auditorium. The benefits, Groothuis believes, are enormous. "It becomes more comfortable to listen to. People can then concentrate harder and longer and then understand more."

The downside is that the microphones have to be in prominent places and are very sensitive. That places enormous limitations on the use of stage machinery as even a low hum can destroy the effect. In tandem with SIAP, all sorts of solutions were sought but Groothuis believes that, much as he hates them - "they're a pain in the arse" - radio mikes seem to be doing the best job.

Both directors and the whole sound department was nervous at broaching the idea of mikes with actors as vocally strong as, say, Ian McKellen who wore one for An Enemy of the People. "There is initial shock," admits Groothuis, but he claims that after reports back from friends and associates they realise that this is not a case of amplification beyond recognition.

"I don't amplify. It's about distributing the sound around the auditorium, putting the actor's voice in a box and moving it to the back of the auditorium. He does, however, concede that they occasionally nudge the sound level up. "But only for crucial technical reasons," he insists, "if an actos turns upstage. I would never do that with an actor facing the audience downstage. For him, it is a technical tool, somewhat akin to using a sound effect like adding a cavernous echo over a scene.

This is all well and good but the danger is that we may be standing at the edge of a precipice. In this theatre, the system may be used responsibly to overcome archtectural and acoustic shortcomings but what of the future?

It's similar to the opera surtitles debate. Projecting text above the stage is clearly a boon to audiences who don't know the opera but it stops people watching the action. If no-one watching them, why should a singer struggle to communicate a dramatic idea when you could just stand and deliver?

Theatre is increasingly reliant on TV and film stars, many of whom know little of vocal production. If someone on the sound desk can twiddle knobs in order to lift their performance into a different realm, there's little incentive to work at it.

As with most things, the answerr lies in the subtlety with which this is used. In America, theatre has succumbed to wholesale amplification. Let's hope the National's usuage of it doesn't signal the beginning of the end.