Summary:
Price: ~$100 per ticket. Buy tickets here.
Worth it? YES. This play has had a lot of hype surrounding it for 3 years now, so I was skeptical if it would live up. It did. This is the coolest "theater" experience I've ever had.
Comments: Perfect to do with an adventurous friend or someone you know very well. Not a good outing for dates, clients, kids or mom and dad (unless your parents are really cool). Also would not recommend for anyone who is uncomfortable walking around for long periods of time for any reason or anyone who is uncomfortable watching violence. The Manderlay is an amazing bar but to get a table in the band pit is expensive. I would imagine the McKittrick Hotel's restaurant The Heath is an equally great, equally pricey experience.
This dark & stormy night in New York is a perfect opportunity to write about my recent experience at Sleep No More, a "play" by the innovative UK-based theater company Punchdrunk. "Play" is in quotes because although Sleep No More is loosely based on Shakespeare's Macbeth, it is nothing like traditional Shakespearean theater where you watch from your chair, removed from the stage and passively observe the actors. Sleep No More is instead a meandering, physically involved experience that's interactive and creepily voyeuristic. Viewers take part in this visual, aural performance art that involves no words and "intense psychological experiences" as warned by the literature the McKittrick Hotel sends in advance of the performance:
The NYTimes went so far as to call Sleep No More a "movable orgy" and though I personally did not view anything that extreme, such a scene may well be in Sleep No More's repertoire. Below I'll share my experience attending the show with my friend Erica in April, but keep in mind that the show is designed so that each viewer experiences something completely different. If you haven't seen Sleep No More yet and want to be completely surprised, then stop reading here.
[SPOILER ALERT]
Erica & I walk into the McKittrick Hotel on 27th Street between 10th and 11th Avenues on a Thursday night around 6:30pm. At bag check, we're each given a playing card from a deck and are directed upstairs. I get the 2 of clubs.
At the top of the stairs, we walk into the Manderley Bar and are immediately transported to the Jazz Age, a period in history we will remain in for the next three hours or so. All hotel staff - the maitre d', hostesses, cocktail waiters, bartenders - are dressed in period attire and speak in the cadence and slang of the early 20th century. The attention to detail in the decor, upholstery and fixtures of the Manderley is exquisite, and feels just like being in a real Deco-era jazz bar, right down to the old ribbon microphone accompanying the live jazz band on stage, and the pit of small round tables and chairs surrounding it. Along with the other guests, we sip cocktails and enjoy the music.
Soon, an outspoken waitress/hostess in a beautiful sequin dress and flapper-esque hair and make-up tells the crowd to listen for their playing card number to be called. We'd heard from our friends who attended the show before that groups and pairs are purposely split up, but resolved to stay together we pretend like we have the same number. No one checks our cards anyway.
With a small group, we're corralled toward an elevator where we're each given a plastic Venetian beak mask that is ghastly white and conjures thoughts of V for Vendetta and Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut (PS - you get to keep the mask as a souvenir.) The flapper, now speaking in a dramatic voice, acts slightly erratic and mentally disturbed, and tells the group we cannot take off our masks for the entirety of our time inside the hotel and warns us there is no speaking, photography or phone use (there is no service in there anyway) whatsoever in the hotel. It kind of feels like we are heading into a haunted house. We are intrigued.
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My Sleep No More mask that I kept after the show[/caption]The now masked group of strangers crowds into an elevator with another Deco-era character, a man in a bellboy uniform, who gives us more direction to split up and explore when the elevator doors open.
After ascending several floors, the doors open into darkness and as our eyeballs adjust, we walk and feel our way through a brief labrynth that leads to a misty, dimly-lit corridor. The first actor we see is a man in a white shirt, suspenders and brown pants. He is frantically running through the corridor. Several of us follow him into a bathroom. Erratically, he disrobes until he's completely nude. He slinks to the floor in the darkness and sits up against the tile wall for a while, looking distressed and dejected. He then enters the shower and beings to wash himself thoroughly (all while we're standing in the bathroom with him, watching). It feels weird and wrong standing this close to a stranger who is a) so visibly shaken up and b) naked and I wonder what this situation, and the entire show, is trying to say something about voyeurism in our culture. Or, maybe it's not.
He gets out of the shower and starts taking swigs from a wine or booze bottle on a table in the bathroom while he dries off. He points for someone in the masked audience circled around him to bring his shirt. A masked woman helps him get his arms through the sleeves. He combs his hair in the mirror, composes himself and walks out of the bathroom quickly, down the hall and out of sight.
We follow slowly in his direction further down the corridor, eyes still not fully adjusted. The group starts to split up as we open different doorways and walk into rooms. One room is a taxidermist's menagerie. One room is a doctor's office. Another is a mortician's with an open, empty coffin. Another belongs to a florist/herbalist. Another seems to belong to a chaplain, who comes in and out of the office and sits down at his desk, looking distraught and writing feverishly. In these rooms, we open drawers, sift through trunks, pick up half empty bottles, read secret notes and bloodstained letters written with old ink pens. There is no concept of time passing by.
Although there is no music and no talking from the actors or audience members, it's not completely silent. There are strategically "modulated aural swells" as a NY Magazine reviewer referred to them, and that's a pretty accurate description to of dramatic, bellowing background sound throughout the experience.
After thoroughly exploring and being mesmerized by the incredible detail of all the rooms on this floor (we whispered to each other how much wanted to "Instagram everything on this set") we find ourselves in a dark, zig-zagging pathway between ceiling-high wooden storage boxes. A waiter or bartender runs by frantically. A man and a woman dance in secret. After the other guests and actors passed through, Erica & I manage to snap a highly illegal selfie at this point (remember, the schizophrenic flapper strictly forbade it):
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A Sleep No More Selfie[/caption]We soon come upon a bedroom and watch an elaborate choreographed sequence between a male and female character (Macbeth and Lady Macbeth we assume) that was part erotic dance and part ballet. The sequence spans from the bathtub to the bedroom and ends in a dramatic fight. More bathubs and bathers come into play in other rooms, where naked actors, covered in blood, trembling, wring their hands and wash their bodies in intense desperation and shame.
On another floor, we walk through a tree-lined graveyard with eerie lighting, ominous sounds, and the hum of crickets in the background. We arrive at an extremely disturbing room lined with little beds and toys that is clearly an infirmary for children. It even smells like antiseptic in the room. It gives me the worst goosebumps.
We descend to another floor where we watch a woman behind a bar suspiciously mixing up a concoction. There is another woman in the room, she is pregnant (Lady MacDuff?) We don't stay to watch the situation play out. We descend to another floor and watch what appears to be a very emotional funeral. A priest character prays over a corpse on a table in a tiny room. There are candles lit in vigil, and other characters pass in and out.
We walk out of the room and meander through a large open floor space and watch an emotional, solo ballet/acrobatic choreographed sequence performed by one scantily clad female actor with very long blonde hair. We continue on to a library/study and witness a man murder another man via pillow suffocation under what looks like a brightly colored, silky shiek's tent.
Nearby, in a luxuriously upholstered and decorated lounge on the lower level of this floor, we watch one man shave another man's beard (for real) with an open razor, water and shaving cream. He comes dangerously close to cutting him Sweeney-Todd style, right under the Adam's apple, at least twice. The man almost falls back in his chair and grows increasingly uneasy and defensive, although they don't exchange any words. They seem to laugh about it afterwards. They help each other put on suspenders and nice suit jackets and pour each other whiskey; they seem to be getting ready to go out somewhere.
They join all the actors as they converge back at the open floor space and sit down at long table for a feast and the climax of the show. This is the most exciting part of the whole experience, and the only point when all the actors are all together in the same room. The actors don't speak but they chew their food and move in slow motion, making powerful eye contact with one another and contorting their faces in expressions the go from calm and jovial to extreme anger and hatred and then back again. This goes on for a long time, in sync with powerful, foreboding background music and dramatic moving lights.
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The dinner scene[/caption]The actors then get off the stage and dance. They couple off but trade partners frequently. The pregnant actress drinks multiple cocktails during this time and appears to get drunk. Her partner forgets about her and dances with someone else. She ends up passed out on the floor and none of her counterparts seems to notice or care. The actors trade partners constantly and a lot of the women's clothes are falling off. It's evident there is jealousy and tension going on, even though some put on a smiling face.
Soon after this scene, we walk away from the big room and find ourselves in a hallway that leads right back to the well-lit Manderley. As our eyes adjust back to the light, we are astounded to learn that 3 hours have gone by and it's now past 11pm. We take off our masks, get a drink and try to digest what the hell just happened to us while a woman on stage sings a Frank Sinatra song. We ask a waitress if we can sit at one of the small tables in the pit by the stage (it's blocked off by velvet ropes) and she tells us that we can, (staying in character the whole time) but that guests pay 100's of dollars for the tables so we can only sit there until the rightful party shows up. They never do. We stay for about another hour, discuss all the different aspects of the wild, artistic nightmare we just spent the last three hours of our lives in and decided we were most mesmerized by the incredible details of the set design. We both comment that we could have been entertained/impressed just exploring all the details the McKittrick Hotel's 6 floors and over 100 rooms, even without the actors (not to take anything away from them, they were amazingly talented dancers and actors).
We spend about an hour more in the bar of the Jazz Age until we realize we need to get back to reality. We leave the McKittrick Hotel and enter back into 2014 via 27th Street. We keep talking about the experience for weeks to come.
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