I was contracted as Associate Lighting Designer to Rick Fisher for a short UK production period in the New Theatre Oxford (seen at right during the fit-up!), followed by a week in Birmingham Hippodrome and then into London, where it played a season at Sadlers Wells, the place of its birth, over Christmas and New Year 2004/5.

A lot of the set has been rebuilt so that it can play larger and wider stages. There are new Act 2 trees, and the columns are now a full 8m tall; extra lighting equipment was installed to cope with this extra height.

Getting light to the very tops of the columns has always been problematic and so this time, at my suggestion, we added some 90 degree Selecon Pacifics as pipe-ends to light the tops of the columns on their own side, a solution that has worked remarkably well. We also added additional 2kW backlighting to give a little extra punch to the 5kW coverage on wider stages.

Also new is a completely rebuilt theatre portal and royal box for the 'ballet' scene, which looks a lot better than the original and makes the scene changes much smoother.