![]() ![]() What followed was an optical illusion I have yet to make sense of… the light rapidly flashed and characters appeared to move in stop motion. Lighting plays a crucial role in the staging. Then light pierces the darkness, coming down like a stroke of lightning. Their interactions are heated, emotions from a storyline from another corner of the set. Suddenly, a third witch-in this production, played by a man-enters with Macbeth. Another of the “weird sisters,” in a red gown, seems to be speaking in hymns and flails her arms as if casting a spell or beckoning a storm. In what appears to be a disused dance hall, a witch guides us into an eerie darkness. Surely, this moment is too private to be witnessed in such intimate proximity?īut the most unforgettable moment (which I am lucky to witness on both of my trips into this haunting hotel) can only be described as a psycho-horror-light-show-rave involving the show’s Three Witches. Four other masked audience members crowd around her in this cramped space I feel out of place. I see her touch up her makeup, examine her complexion and consider herself solemnly in the mirror. Early in the show, I find Lady Macbeth in her drawing room. Sleep No More offers a cerebral and bodily experience made possible only by the staggering skill and vulnerability of the cast. After my most recent visit, I can confirm the rumor is true. Rumor tells of a seventh floor that only a lucky few, plucked from the audience, have seen. The show’s six-floor set has not only a ballroom, a study and living quarters but also a dance hall, a forest and an asylum. It’s easy to get lost-audience members are almost encouraged to. I’ve attended Sleep No More twice, and despite feeling like I had the lay of the land during my second viewing, I saw scenes, characters and portions of the set that were new to me. It’s just not a show one can absorb in its totality in a night. ![]() Instead, we are given the pleasure of discovering the raw human story beneath each scene, detail and touch-insofar as we can. This is intentional the freedom to dip in and out of characters and scenes lets the audience not search for a plot or score the success of the cast’s rhetorical interpretation of Shakespeare. The entire play is performed twice, yet it’s hard to catch a cohesive storyline. It feels like we’re transported to a Prohibition-era speakeasy or perhaps we’ve been dropped into a living movie no one dressed for.Īt Sleep No More, confusion is key. Solo jazz performers play throughout the room in a synchronous symphony that sets the stage for the evening’s entertainment. Everything from the food and drinks to the atmosphere has the veneer of a sexy noir film. The light is maroon and purple staff are in lavish gowns and suits. The audience enters through a pitch-black tunnel that leads to the Manderley Bar-a reference to Hitchcock. The characters are tormented by shame and paranoia while we are spared from it, shrouded by masks that render us faceless-and blameless-as a macabre plot unravels before us. “ The mask is our theater seat,” said Felix Barret, Punchdrunk’s founder and artistic director, in a 2015 interview. Audience members are asked to turn in their belongings, including their phones, and to wear ghostly Venetian masks for the entirety of the show. Perhaps because it’s so all-encompassing. We are masked voyeurs whose ardor is never at risk of “taking away” the performance. There is nudity, but the audience isn’t engaging in lechery. “Lechery, sir, it provokes and unprovokes it provokes the desire, but it takes away the performance,” says the Porter to Macduff in The Bard’s Scottish play-a few words that adeptly capture the inherent contrasts in the sensuality of Sleep No More. SEE ALSO: Broadway’s ‘Grey House’ Raids the Grave for Horror Clichés Instead, the story is told through the actors’ movements through a meticulously detailed six-floor set. ![]() While the play and most of its characters are indeed rooted in Shakespeare, the performance has little dialogue. ![]() In brief, Sleep No More offers up a dramatic, paranoid, sultry and murderous portrayal of humanity. ![]()
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