Characters rush in and out of rooms, tumbling and pirouetting around and on top of each other, disappearing as quickly as they came. The storyline of "Sleep No More" is a wordless reimagining of Macbeth told largely through dance. In a medium that hasn’t changed much since Shakespearean days, "Sleep No More" stands apart as a true innovation in immersive theatre. Punchdrunk has created a type of entertainment medium mash-up that is wholly immersive in ways all other forms of entertainment aspire to but rarely achieve. Audience members are free to walk, run and rifle through over 100 rooms in the labyrinthine space and its elaborately designed sets, each with their own unique sights, sounds, smells and even tastes. For this immersive theatre experience, they’ve mixed two parts Macbeth, one part film noir, a healthy splash of stage blood and just a pinch of drug-fueled techno orgy, shaken vigorously and served unapologetically.įirst staged in Boston before coming to New York City, "Sleep No More" is a choose-your-own-adventure play extrapolated across six floors of three abandoned warehouses. Unbeknownst to me, I’d stepped onto the blood stained set of "Sleep No More", an innovative concoction dreamed up by site-specific British theatre company Punchdrunk. As the elevator lurched to our destination and the doors opened, he offered these parting words: “this experience is best had alone.” The attendant explained that there would be no talking during my stay at the McKittrick Hotel and that I was to wear a carnival-style mask at all times, but also that I was free to explore the space as I saw fit. A few cocktails in, slightly buzzed and still contemplating what I’d agreed to, my number was called and I followed instructions to pile into an elevator. Several blacked-out hallways later, we pushed aside a velvet curtain, entering a bar plucked straight from the 1930s. Hesitantly pushing forward we discovered a desk, behind which stood a woman handing out a single playing card in exchange for each of our names. As the doors closed behind we found ourselves in a long, pitch black hallway. Click on any photograph to see it enlarged.I lined up in the rain with friends on a Friday night outside a warehouse in Chelsea and waited for the doorman to usher us in, one small group at a time. Since the show began, “Sleep No More” now plays seven days a week, and it is popular enough that the “McKittrick Hotel,” still not a real hotel, has become a hub for nightlife, with a restaurant, a rooftop bar, a small concert venue, and a place for special event parties, on Valentine’s Day and other occasions, that offer “Sleep No More” in a package deal.
I tired of exploration well before the three hours were up - thanks largely to the clammy and creepy Scream/Eyes Wide Shut masks we were required to wear - but spent some 15 minutes trying to figure out how to exit the place the mute masked ushers weren’t much help. Audience members explore at their own pace for up to three hours. There are also drawers full of relevant photographs and letters to riffle through. One can wander on one’s own through the half dozen floors of close to 100 dimly-lit rooms, some of which don’t feel like rooms at all, such as a graveyard that seems to generate its own fog. It’s up to the theatergoers to follow the characters as they rush up and down the stairs, entering into various startling tableaux vivant – Lady Macbeth washing her hands naked in a bathtub, say - or rough-and-tumble dancing.
The production depends on theatergoers’ prior knowledge of the Scottish play, generally a good bet, although the more recently someone has read it (or seen a straightforward production of it), the more the disparate images and chaotic moments of “Sleep No More” will cohere. It is the show that started the latest trend of immersive theater in New York, and it is an engaging if dizzying mix of design, dance and drama – or at least a trigger to recall the drama in Shakespeare’s tragedy, since none of the performers recite the Bard’s lines.
It has been running since 2011 in a formerly abandoned club in Chelsea renamed the McKittrick Hotel. “Sleep No More” is Punchdrunk Theater’s staging of Macbeth, as if retold by Alfred Hitchcock and Isadora Duncan.
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