MELBOURNE, Australia — Norwest Productions is supporting the latest — and perhaps final — tour of Barry Humphries, a.k.a. Sir Les Patterson, a.k.a. Dame Edna, a.k.a. Sandy Stone, with gear from L-Acoustics, Martin Audio, Lab.gruppen and DPA. Humphries’ farewell tour, Eat, Pray, Laugh, is an all-singing, all-dancing spectacular. Norwest Productions is providing the audio, and the FOH operator for the show is one of their longtime employees, Aaron Mason.
The PA includes 22 L-Acoustics Kudo line array speakers set up in various configurations based on the dimensions of the theatre. Added to that are two L-Acoustics SB218, eight Martin Audio EM15 speakers for front fill and six EAW JF80 for delays. Nine 
Lab.gruppen plm10000q and six Lab.gruppen fp6400 amplifiers power the system.
The show posed some unusual problems for Mason, including the inclusion of a life-size elephant and dealing with the copious amounts of spit that Sir Les Patterson sprays over the sound gear. The elephant transports Dame Edna onto the stage at the beginning of Act II and, although it plays a very small part in the show, it causes a few challenges for the sound crew.
“The elephant is three meters high and, in some of the venues we are playing, it means that the PA has to be hung very high,” said Mason. “In Newcastle I couldn’t actually see it from my console.”
Another unusual aspect to the production is the requirement for a clear and open stage, which means that Mason cannot place his EAW SM200 wedges at the front of the stage. Consequently they are hidden side of stage and also within the onstage hedges along with four RCF speakers.
For the characters of Sir Les and his brother Gerard as well as Sandy, DPA4061 lapel microphones are used. Sir Les has them on his shirt lapels, but we have to place them fairly wide, because he spits so much,” said Mason. “Previously he has worn them like a normal lapel microphone closer to the buttons of the shirt but, unfortunately, the capsules would often get waterlogged! They seem 
to work just as well wider out and fortunately he doesn’t seem to spit in that direction.”
The dancers use DPA4066 headsets, while Dame Edna actually has a couple of Sennheiser EM3032 radio microphones located within her legendary glasses. A QLab Replay System is used from a Mac computer side of stage to run effects — mainly Sir Les on the toilet with his chronic diarrhea.
FOH Aaron uses a Yamaha DM2000 console with Dolby Lake 4/12 System Processors and he has to keep on his toes as Barry Humphries will quite often go off script. “Act 1 has three characters; Sir Les, Gerard and Sandy, and each costume and mic change takes less than a minute, which creates a fairly fast running show,” he added.
