The plots are elusive but heightened and engaging: follow a vengeful murder, a lusty ball, an intoxicating rave. The play moves in tidal currents: scenes breathe and fade, and audiences chase figures they find compelling, leading to a thrush of anxious attendees clutching one another as they chase durable characters and flimsy plots. That ease of losing yourself and others may feel welcome.
#SLEEP NO MORE SHOW PLUS#
Dress as you see fit it doesn’t quite matter what you wear before stepping into the space - audiences don masks (both the N95 and the masquerade kind) for increased anonymity - and the lights are so subdued that, even if you wish to tag along with your theatergoing plus one, you may quickly lose them in the incentive and labyrinthine set. The concept is 1920s hunted hotel: speakeasy bar, vested men, and glorious taxidermy. Keeping to this tragic play’s narrative seems secondary experience is key here, and the production packs it in. The cast of a dozen strong invites multiple trajectories: a murderer hungry for power (Macbeth), his wife who licks and cleans his bloody wounds (Lady M), and some carnal figures who initiate a strobe light-infused rave (the three witches, I assume). The actors dance more than dialogue, making a welcoming space as long as you’re cool with dim lighting and sexy movement. Taking place through the entirety of the 100,000 square feet McKittrick Hotel set, actors sprint across rooms and tumble down stairs as the audience rushes to follow. In New York, a cast of high caliber dancers create a silent, noir-esq rendition of the classic work. Wisely more physical than verbal, the show, created by the British theatre company Punchdrunk, welcomes a more diverse range of audiences if Shakespearean verse deters you, fret not here. What is Sleep No More An Immersive performance of Shakespeare’s Macbeth. So what happens at Sleep No More ? It depends on the journey you take and the characters you follow. It’s a theatrical playground whose throughline loosely (very loosely) mimics that of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, a quote from which inspires the title of this New York mainstay’s work. In fact, the dutiful staff ensures your phone is kept under lock and key before you enter the performance space, an attention to detail I wish was similarly enforced at most Broadway shows.Īnd speaking of performance space: after being holed up at home for the past two years, the sprawling, multi-floor setting of the McKittrick Hotel, the 27th Street setting of Sleep No More, feels like an airy adult jungle gym. All the same, stumbling groggily up and down staircases and around darkened hallways gives the night the sludgy, abstracted aura of a nightmare.Leave your iPhone and Waze app at home: Sleep No More has no guide or roadmap, which is a major part of its appeal. The only caveat I would offer is to attend Sleep No More fully rested: You need your wits about you. A Shakespearean can walk about checking off visual allusions to the classic tragedy the less lettered can just revel in the freaky haunted-house vibe.
#SLEEP NO MORE SHOW FULL#
I chose the latter, discovering a room lined with empty hospital beds a leafless wood in which a nurse inside a thatched cottage nervously checks her pocket watch an office full of apothecary vials and powders and the ballroom, forested with pine trees screwed to rolling platforms (that would be Birnam Wood). Click the link that says Change settings that are currently unavailable. Click the Choose what the power button does link on the left side of the window. You can follow the mute dancers from one floor to the next, or wander aimlessly through empty spaces. Open the Control Panel in Large icons view. troupe Punchdrunk, have orchestrated a true astonishment, turning six warehouse floors and approximately 100,000 square feet into a purgatorial maze that blends images from the Scottish play with ones derived from Hitchcock movies-all liberally doused in a distinctly Stanley Kubrick eau de dislocated menace.Īn experiential, Choose Your Own Adventure project such as this depends on the pluck and instincts of the spectator. Directors Felix Barrett and Maxine Doyle, of the U.K. Your sense of space and depth-already compromised by the half mask that audience members must don-is further blurred as you wend through more than 90 discrete spaces, ranging from a cloistral chapel to a vast ballroom floor. A multitude of searing sights crowd the spectator's gaze at the bedazzling and uncanny theater installation Sleep No More.
To untimely rip and paraphrase a line from Macbeth: Our eyes are made the fools of the other senses, or else worth all the rest.
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