Adele: A Matter of Design

Adele : A Mat A conversation with Adele is a matter of design. Sarah Rushton-Read reports . . .

Performance photography by Ralph Larmann

Timeless, sophisticated and spacious - the stage work of prolific and versatile designer Es Devlin OBE for Adele’s first ever arena tour creates an intimate, almost hypnotic atmosphere, in which a refreshing wash-cycle of emotions takes place via the 27-year old’s universally captivating songs and gritty, witty banter.

picture, production manager Richard Young points out: “This show’s success is all about the attention to detail.

Every element is clean, the edges are perfectly straight and the whites are super-white. Everything has to move in one clean gesture. To me it’s more like an art installation than anything else.”

Devlin worked in close collaboration with Adele herself, and alongside world-renowned lighting designers Patrick Woodroffe and Adam Bassett of Woodroffe Bassett Design and award-winning video content designer Luke Halls of Treatment Studio. Together, they created a striking and theatrical layer-cake of performance, content, i-mag and light on a truly epic scale.

With no dancers, no big numbers or statement costume changes, Devlin’s response to the brief is a modern-day classic. Super chic, understated and uncluttered, the main stage features a titanic-sized, prow-shaped light box, which frames a similarly jutting A-stage floor. It also provides the runners for two huge mesh projection surfaces that glide imperceptibly in and out, as and when required. “The team executes a small number of gags extremely well,” continues Young. “Between them they’ve delivered a filmic, close to TV-quality show in an arena. This has brought its own challenges, including the need for millimetre-precise camera positions and an ability to understand the director’s shot through the back and the ambient light levels. When you’re dealing with

It’s no secret that 25 is the only major tour Adele plans on doing, and that once it’s done she has chosen to dedicate herself to being a full-time mum. As a result, it was a crucial part of the design brief that in years to come, her arena tour was something she would be able to look back upon with pride. With an eye on the bigger

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projection on this scale and you want to be subtle, the finer details matter so much more.”

Both the main stage and the second diamond shaped B-stage are aesthetically connected by gauze projection surfaces on to which a mix of live i-mag and prerecorded content is broadcast. This provides the main vehicle by which Devlin reveals and hides the various facets of Adele’s personality and/or the different narratives of her songs. It is also the way that intimacy between Adele and her audience is emphasised or withdrawn. Sometimes Adele is behind the gauzes, sometimes in front, sometimes there is a projection in front of her and/or a video image on the LED screen behind her.

Throughout the show, regardless of where Adele is in the arena, the audience attention is sharply focused on her.

Echoing the styling of her album artwork, the content embraces and underscores Adele’s distinctive and recognisable style: sweeping black eyeliner, gorgeously

styled hair, hollowed cheeks, plump glossy lips, sparkling sophisticated gown and the signature expressive hands.

Prior to the tour Devlin had worked on a number of live and TV projects with Adele, including slots at the Grammys and the BRITs. She also designed a show for the artist at Radio City Music Hall, New York, which straddled both the TV and concert mediums and from which much of the current tour design evolved.

“My process was to try and understand Adele’s character and create an environment that she would be most comfortable in,” explains Devlin.

At first glance the result strikes as visually minimalist, but that minimalism belies a more complex concept, as Devlin explains: “I wanted to provide a clean architecture for Adele’s character and her voice, which are two entirely different things. I felt I needed to present her on fresh, large surfaces. She says herself that she’s two

Photo: Jasper Clarke

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Designer Es Devlin

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different people, she’s the voice and then she’s Adele the individual. This is true of most artists but with Adele it’s more overt. She’s prepared to share the gap between the superstar persona she inhabits when she’s singing and the real her when she’s not. Because she’s so explicit about it, I made it part of the declaration of the show and a lot of my focus was then on ‘how do I reveal her?’”

of her own poster. It’s here that she tells us about where she originates from, singing Hometown which features aerial views of London and also of each city the production tours to on the backdrop. Only on the third song does she reveal her true self. Now you’ve got her, she’s being relayed live and direct to you. It’s a delayed gratification.”

Indeed, the reveal instigates from the moment the audience walks in. The huge A-stage screens are filled with a projection of Adele with her eyes closed and at first you think it is a still photograph but you soon become aware that it’s actually video: “I wanted to open with a Maria Callas diva-style persona on stage and projected on the screens. Not until three songs in did I want Adele to speak, but when she did I knew she would reveal that sassy, funny lady everyone loves and, in the process, puncture the diva balloon.”

The stage framing brings a striking focus to the show, Adele’s relationship to the audience and the intimacy level between them. “When she’s outside she’s her usual warm, witty, outgoing self and yet from inside the atmosphere reveals a generous grandeur with her extravagant band/orchestra,” explains Devlin. “The philosophy is to reveal and conceal in equal measure. I’ve loved the visual depth that can be created using the LED screen backdrop and the projection on the front gauze.

Playing with the brightness level of LED screen against the levels of lighting and the projection on the gauzes has given us a fascinating palette to work with.”

Devlin says a lot of work went into the exact timing of the blinks during the first song. “We wanted to convey a sense of ‘here’s the poster of the character and here comes the character’. Then they meet, and she’s in front

Devlin says she also wanted to avoid the notion of introducing the artist to the audience via two i-mag

There are no sharp edges or jarring moments on this show: everything from the movement in and out of the gauze screen on A-stage to the transitions between songs and Adele’s two sharply contrasting personas is smooth, practised and discrete. The show is seductive, immersive and consuming but at the same time features some stand-out moments, such as the slow searchlight effect over the audience during Skyfall, the stunning blend of content by Luke Halls with the live i-mag images that are projected onto the front gauze, the strong backlight that creates silhouettes of Adele and her band on the front gauzes and Woodroffe’s beautiful, high-contrast key lighting which brings a film noir, movie star quality to the projected and broadcast images of Adele’s beautifully expressive face and hands.

Considering Adele is just 27 years old and has only done a couple of tours in her life, Woodroffe says she was explicit in what she wanted.

“She may not have been sure how that would be characterised in terms of design, but she’s clear about who she is and how she wants to portray herself,” he explains. “This early dialogue, understanding what the artist expects and wants, is more important to me than the shape of the stage or what colour the lights are going to be.

“Adele was adamant that she didn’t want a big, bright, colourful, pop-y show,” he continues. “We began with the premise of the show

being an entirely white light show. Apart from one very bright saturated red cue, we pretty much stuck to that.”

One very helpful part of the process was the live show at Radio City Musical Hall, filmed by NBC. “We staged the huge production with just two days’ rehearsal - that was a mad thing to do!” laughs Woodroffe. “Nevertheless, this experience meant we went into rehearsal at Wembley in January with a clear idea of the design aesthetic and how bold or restrained we could be. It wasn’t too complicated as we were all on the same page. That’s not always the case. It can take time to discover what each of the other designers wants and believe me, it’s not always the same!”

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screens either side of the stage: “To me it’s counter productive and it makes the artist peripheral to their own show. This paradigm seems to have grown out of sound design in concert touring. Because there are always two speakers, people feel there should be two screens.

It doesn’t make sense, because most members of the audience can see both screens regardless of where they are sitting. My aim was to have the audience focus on Adele central to where she’s playing, if she’s on the B-stage then the audience should be focusing on her, albeit through an image of her on the gauze screens when necessary.”

Woodroffe and Bassett’s biggest challenge was to accommodate the considerable projection and LED screen content, the use of gauze screens and of course two separate stages, while lighting Adele consistently for camera and to her exacting instruction.

As with all Woodroffe’s designs, 25 is a carefully and accurately focused show - the transitions between cues are masterfully subtle and precise. Every number is a little jewel, every song is separate and individual, yet as a catalogue of work the whole show hangs beautifully together, restrained but not repetitive.

“My main concern - particularly for Adele - is ensuring she looks the best she can,” states Woodroffe. “She’s an amazing looking woman and her face is incredibly photogenic. Our job is to style and balance light for the cameras in the most beautiful way possible. It’s a craft to light for camera. During the BRITs we were lucky to work closely with TV lighting director Al Gurdon. I also worked with Allen Branton, and Robert Dickinson on The Grammys. All are brilliant lighting designers who deeply understand lighting for film and TV and I learned a lot.”

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Photo: Ralph Larmann

It goes without saying that this show is designed to look exquisite on camera. For each song Adele barely moves: “We use two followspots on her face, very delicately just to bring up a level or soften the picture, but in general we rely on front key light. Adele has an amazing make-up artist, Michael Ashton, and we always work closely with him. A lot of the live camera shots are in black and white, which means we can achieve high contrast between the shape of her face and the way her hair frames her face, echoing the design of her album covers.”

Adele’s raw and personal catalogue is beautifully conveyed through Halls’ multi-layered, sometimes blurry, often surreal visuals that are more photographic than filmic. Halls commissioned three photographers to shoot abstract slow-motion content, using oblique angles. “I decided on photographers because I wanted a particular look. We used Sony FS7s - the cheapest slow motion camera you can get, which allowed us to shoot more slow motion than you would be able to with a more expensive rig - and, by making things slightly blurred, they evoked a half-remembered idea of a place.”

However, Halls says it was testing to build compelling stories around the songs when their subject is so intimate. “I wanted the images to evoke the right atmosphere without necessarily being explicit in terms of telling a story. Adele’s music is about emotional memories, so visually we wanted to make something that conjured that. We wanted to make it multi-layered. There’s never just one story happening and each interacts and influences the other.”

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Video content designer Luke Halls of Treatment Studio.

Lighting director and programmer Roland Greil.

Lighting designers Adam Bassett (left) and Patrick Woodroffe.

Halls explains that coordinating the inter-play between the projection, the downstage gauze, i-mag and the LED backdrop upstage could also be challenging. The images had to work together while at the same time enable Woodroffe to light through the gauzes. Given that most of his rig was upstage of the screens, this was a complex task.

“It was both interesting and a steep learning curve to play with gauzes on such a huge scale,” Halls says. “It’s not easy to scale theatrical techniques up to arena-level and decide when to reveal the band, and when to take them away. We’ve learnt a lot about layering on a grand scale, what works and what doesn’t. Normally people layer imagery on one surface or screen. In this show we’re layering

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gauze with LED screen and lighting and then using live camera feeds to layer on top. Es coined the term ‘i-mag soup’! Everything was broken across the surfaces and that was interesting, but it could get messy. The more designed and the more intentional it got, the more it gave perspective in the lens. That language took time to figure out.”

Halls also had to consider the live cameras: “Cameras are intrinsic to this show. We know how difficult camera work can be in the live arena environment, however we invested heavily in working with both Patrick and video director, Matt Askem, on lighting and camera shots to ensure Adele looked her best - she would accept nothing less. What emerged was how crucial camera positioning is to the look and it wasn’t going to be something that could be messed around with, it had to be right.”

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Askem is therefore client-focused and has worked as Adele’s champion throughout. “The show design is technically simple for video, but that simplicity has been hard to deliver in some instances, particularly with the unforgiving LED screen. Adele has been paramount in driving the creative so it’s not been a case of me trying to reinvent any wheels. She doesn’t like fussy pictures; she’s a big fan of black and white and she wants to achieve that dead central full-face look, which is hard in an arena environment, primarily because the cameras are generally all too far away to deliver that look on a screen of that size and quality. It’s also awkward when I want to position cameras that will mess up all those lovely, clean sightlines. Nevertheless, when it’s necessary to achieve what’s required I’ve had to insist on some positions - in most cases I’ve prevailed, in one I haven’t!”

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Likewise, Adele doesn’t like cutting between pictures and would prefer Askem to sit on a shot for a whole song: “This is something I try to achieve in television. The more shows I’ve done with Adele, the better my anticipation.

She understands, with the songs on the B-stage particularly, that she has to play to one side of the house and then the other.”

“The show was rehearsed as one might rehearse an opera,” says Woodroffe: “We had disciplined lighting, camera and video sessions. We were all prepared to do

Young, who had the unenviable job of having to decide how the budget might liberate or constrain the designers, concludes: “There’s definitely things I’ve deliberated and hindsight tells me that the right decision was

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Whether it’s the focus or the timing, triggering or execution of a cue, lighting director and programmer Roland Greil plotted the show with meticulous attention to detail. “It’s a completely manual show,” he explains. “We try to avoid timecode for the cueing, so I broke down the musical structure of each of her songs. I like to know before rehearsals that I’ve got all the possible cue points. In the end we lost 60 or 70% of those and worked closely with the video cue points. While we were rehearsing we refined the show every day, pre-empting the cue by just two seconds or a millisecond, which could make a big difference in the transitions. The key was not to overwhelm her presence, to always keep her in central focus. Apart from the last song, she really stays within an area of four by four metres, so we constantly worked the detail and when it came to fixture choice the most important thing was versatility in terms of colour and brightness.”

made. Take the A-stage lightbox: in version one we discussed having stretch fabric, but I was concerned that we would not be able to tour and keep it clean. We then went down the route of having one with plastic panels.

That was prototyped, built and delivered, but when it got here it wasn’t right, so we went back to stretch fabric. Every design element has demanded a process to arrive at what we wanted. It’s been a nice feeling that not everybody’s got all the answers and while we don’t go into things blindly, it’s good to take a voyage of discovery every now and again.”

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There is no doubt that Devlin’s mission to understand Adele and find a way to express her multi-faceted personality and talents by layering content and broadcast mediums has created the space and the atmosphere to bring Adele’s songs to vibrant, multidimensional life. Diva, stand-up comic, people’s friend, mother, broken-hearted teen, nervous performer, strong woman Adele is all these things and so much more.

Her themes and her personality, the issues and feelings she expresses resonate with each and every member of the audience in one wonderful evening of song and banter.

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I have no doubt at all that when Adele is old and grey she will look back at a recording of this show and see a timeless performance she can and should be extremely proud of.

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whatever it took to get it right, everything was done with consideration, and that’s reflected in the show.”

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