Charlie and the Chocolate Factory 2013

Unusual Rigging was responsible for facilitating the flying of the complex and heavy Charlie and the Chocolate Factory set at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane London.

Working alongside production manager Patrick Molony, the team headed by Simon Stone and Simon Tiernan carried out extensive works to the weight capacity of the theatre to accommodate the huge quantity of scenery and technical equipment while being sympathetic to the structural and architectural limitations of the historic listed building.

The team installed :

• 100m of steelwork to strengthen the existing (1890’s vintage) roof trusses, strengthening the head beams to resist the loads imposed by new counterweight cradles
• 40 brand new counterweight cradles with a safe working load of 600kg each, complete with head blocks, drop pulleys and return pulleys, plus 15 tonnes of newly cast weights, all designed from scratch
• 9 tonnes of new steelwork custom designed by Unusual Rigging’s team of theatrical design engineers, to support 5 large winches (the lightest being over 700kg). Between them they lift 12 tonnes of flown scenery
• Two long runs of aluminium support trusses fitted into the grid to accommodate 11 winches which fly lighting towers and side masking
• Two further winches positioned over stage for the operation of the ‘suction pipe’ and the Augustus Gloop mannequin which travels through it
• 1000ft (305m) of ladder beam and 400ft (122m) of truss.

The total flown weight including winches is 46 tonnes. The estimated total weight on the building, including URL steelworks, counterweight and truss, is 75 tonnes.