You end up watching a bartender fight some other guy for awhile before realizing that you've completely missed the point. Next thing you know, here's a new character with a plot all his own.
Half the time, the group divides as it tries to (silently) figure out if Macduff ran up the stairs or slipped into a backroom somewhere. Audience members themselves act as another deterrent to sticking with Macbeth or one of the witches mobs form around the actors and block you from seeing all the action. These actors will run you ragged through corridors and secret passageways, sometimes locking the door behind them. "The idea is once you're let loose on one of the floors of the hotel, you pick out a single character and pursue him or her (though you can switch any time you want), as the performer runs, dances and vaults all over the place." Basically, it requires turning your life into one big alternate reality game before the show even begins.Īs Ben Brantley wrote in his New York Times review:
#Sleep no more actors full#
But maybe that's because I hadn't known that in order to get the full experience of the play I would have had to spend hours unlocking hidden Internet websites and swapping clues on Facebook with other devotees. "Sleep No More" was beautiful, terrifying and novel. In another, a lithe man lip-syncs to Peggy Lee's " Is that All There Is?" while crying. There's even a strobe-light rave room where a naked man wearing a boar's head simulates sex with a woman.
In the basement, there's a dinner party where guests are either having a blood orgy or doing a sweeping waltz, depending when you arrive. In one room, you might find a weeping woman looking at a photograph while packing a suitcase. Sometimes they fight (also a form of dancing, with some super-intense choreography). They perform their wordless scenes as they race from room to room. Then you are let loose in the hotel, where every room is decorated like a spread from "Nightmare Homes Monthly," and run into the "characters" (easy to spot because they aren't wearing masks). They are told they aren't allowed to speak until they return to the lounge and also not to bother the actors - but nothing else is off-limits. The British company Punchdrunk's production is ostensibly the story of "Macbeth," though mixed with Alfred Hitchcock's film "Rebecca" and told in the form of an interactive maze that owes more to video games - New York magazine compared the experience with " puzzle-horror first-person video games like BioShock" - than Shakespeare.Īudiences form groups and are given "Eyes Wide Shut"-style masks as they enter the lounge area, which serves as the show's waiting room. " Sleep No More" is one of the hottest shows in New York right now, which is surprising, considering that I spent most of my two hours during the McKittrick Hotel production wandering around the six-story building, wondering what the hell was going on.
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