Sleep No More

http://sleepnomorenyc.com/

So I was in New York this past weekend (it was awesome! more on that another time), and I wound up seeing the production Sleep No More last night before leaving. It's a bit hard to describe, but at best I would put it as an immersive noir play experience set across 5 floors of a hotel building. The story's loosely based on Macbeth combined with elements of Hitchcock films, most notably Rebecca, and some elements taken from Vertigo (like the name of the hotel, the McKittrick. they also play the theme from the movie during a few key scenes).

The way the production works is that the audience members are given white masquerade-style masks to wear throughout the show, and then are randomly introduced into the hotel itself from the elevator in groups at a time on different floors. Everyone is pretty much left to explore the hotel at their own volition, with the chance of randomly encountering actors (anyone who isn't wearing a mask) in rooms or running across the hotel and its stairwells. The location itself has the atmosphere of a glorified haunted house (or the Tower of Terror from Disneyworld/land), except the environment with the music is more creepy and dark than it is haunted; there isn't anything out rightly frightening or jump scare inducing so much as it just feels tense and eerie, which I like more.

The main storyline of the performance actually loops around each hour for a total of 3 cycles, although I think I only managed to catch wind of the actors during the second cycle, as much of the first hour for me was spent waiting to get into the hotel itself and then orienting myself with the surroundings. I was only partway through exploring the second floor I was on before running into an actor, after which point I lost track of where I was pretty fast since I was too busy focusing on trying to catch up with one of the actors. It can get annoying with the number of audience members they let into the hotel, which often results in other *cough slower* people getting in your way, and I was half-apologizing (silently because you aren't allowed to talk) for running into people and tripping over their feet a lot. The fact that most of the staircases are only big enough for single/double file doesn't help so much when thirty people are all trying to catch up with the same actor at the same time. No wonder the show sells out all the time.

Given that you have events happening across all floors of the hotel at the same time, it's pretty much impossible to experience the entire thing in one performance, and in that sense it might be more stress-inducing for people who are prone to feel anxiety about missing out on the best parts. Not to mention, it's kinda pricy to see the performance more than once, but judging by reviews online there seem to be quite a few people that do that, to the point where they generally know where to go and at what times. I'd say the highlights of the experience, or what most people talk about after, anyway, are most of the scenes taken from Macbeth itself, so if you stick to following him at least for 1 whole cycle, you'll get the gist of what's going on and then it's better to deviate from there to see the rest of whatever action is going on. There was a whole other subplot going on involving the Rebecca inspired characters that I didn't really quite get, and I ran into them first. One of them actually led me into a Macbeth scene, after which point I was pretty much following Macbeth and related characters for the rest of the night because they struck me as generally more exciting to follow at that moment.

The experience will probably vary by person, and to some people the acting might come across as too exaggerated and the overall deal overrated and priced, but I honestly found it a worthwhile experience at least for the novelty of it all... Although Justin did tell me it sounded like a very Ryan-thing to go to. >_>

What follows are spoilers for the production as I try to recall everything I saw that night. It's interesting to compare with the impressions other people have written online; I've been starting to make sense of what scenes I actually did manage to see and which I didn't. It gets confusing sometimes since you aren't given any context for who a particular actor is initially when you run into them; I didn't recognize who Macbeth was until I came across him a second time in a scene that made it pretty obvious. (And if you don't know the story of Macbeth beforehand, it's probably even more confusing.)


1. Prior to the show:
- So I signed up for the dinner reservation before the play, which gives you access to the restaurant on the roof of the building about an hour/half hour prior to the show start. The price of admission is actually the same as going to the show itself, since the restaurant essentially functions on its own and you pay for whatever food/drinks you purchase there separately, and afterwards I was a bit confused as to which group I was supposed to enter the hotel with later. For non-dinner folks, the hotel entry times are every 15 minutes, and the very first time usually sells out pretty fast.

- When I was ready to leave for the show, I asked the lady in front where to report to for the show and she just mysteriously responded, "Well, you could just stay here...." which prompted a random 1-on-1 encounter involving collecting herbs from the plants around the restaurant and then instructing me to hang them upside-down above my bed and then burying/burning them the next day while thinking of whatever I wished for 3 times... or something like that. I guess it was meant to be part of the mysterious experience of the show, although it honestly didn't seem that relevant in comparison.

- They make you check any bags you have prior to entering the hotel; it's mandatory and costs $3 per bag. Better to leave any bags and purses at home before seeing.

- On admission, they give you a playing card that apparently is meant to identify which entry group you're a part of, similar to how at airports they sort people at boarding time by assigned zone numbers or letters. My card was a 4 of hearts, so I was allowed to entered after the A-3 cards.

2. What I saw before running into the Macbethian storyline
- At the beginning, you're walking through a mostly dark or pitch-black artificial corridor with ominous music playing in the background, similar to how it feels to enter a haunted house for the first time. When you get out of that area, you find yourself in the Manderley bar, a bar that evokes a 1920's? nightclub feel with a sort of mysterious aura, which kinda reminds me of something from Twin Peaks or the Velvet Room from Persona. You can order drinks here from one of the staff or the bartender and sit at a table while waiting for your card number to be called out by a fancy looking guy with glass of wine in his hand and a weird I-want-to-say-pseudo British accent. He spoke with a otherworldly sounding voice that reminded me of one of those robots that talk at you while you're waiting in line for a ride at Disneyland or something. I feel like it could've achieved the same kind of ethereal voice effect.

- When you're in place in front of the elevator, the staff (in character) hand you the white masks and explain the basics of the experience: keep your mask on at all times; no talking; if you feel overwhelmed at any point, you're allowed to speak to one of the staff attendants wearing black masks and have them direct you back to the this bar on the second floor; and it's better to split up from whoever you came in with as it's up to you to find your own path through the hotel.

- The bellhop did a pretty good job at being a... mysterious and ominous sounding bellhop, letting only a few people off the elevator on any given floor, and for a first time experience I was really feeling a nervous sense of anticipation, of not really knowing what to expect the moment I got off. Similar to the thrill of being about to experience an epic ride for the first time and seeing off the people going in front of you.

- I got off on the second floor but immediately wandered up to the third floor for no particular reason other than I ran into the stairwell first. I passed through a few creepy bedrooms, and got wind of a mirror that actually gave you a view into a neighboring locked room that had a blood-stained child's bed and a teddy bear on top. According to one of the online sources I've read since, that room gets unlocked by one of the characters later on.

- I wandered outside that area into a dark graveyard, where I ran into what I thought might've been a witch played by a man. He proceeded to walk back into the area I'd just come from (with me and several others following), where he started dancing seductively around and over the furniture. It was weird.

He later ran out of the room, and I got confused because the people in front of me who I thought was following him ran straight into the graveyard, while I saw him to the side running towards one of the stairwells. By the time I reached the stairwell I'd lost him, though.

- I wandered up to the fourth floor, which had a street populated with shops, where I ran into a girl with a suitcase being followed by a procession of other mask wearers. She walked into a nearby bedroom and proceeded to cry while putting away something in a cupboard (which I didn't think to check later) and fall asleep on a bed. Right after that, a man walked out of the neighboring wardrobe, Narnia-style (didn't get to check out that wardrobe either) and inspected the room a bit before heading across the street to the tailor's shop to sew some clothes.

I wound up following these two characters for a bit in the street-shop vicinity here. The two of them had a dancing scene in the tailor's shop, and then at some point a confusing scene happened involving a blonde woman, who I thought was the one who'd greeted us at the elevator, behaving like a ghost passing a medallion on to the suitcase woman, while the man in the tailor shop spied on them from his window, and another man I hadn't seen before in detective garments was inspecting a photo in the girl's living room, all with the theme song from Vertigo playing in the background (according to other reports, the man in the detective robes is actually Malcolm, who interacts sometimes with the non-Macbethian characters). And then they all split up in separate directions and I had a spur of the moment struggle to decide who to follow. I wound up sticking with the girl because I figured I'd been following her so far anyway.

The girl later had something going on with money being secretly transferred in her suitcase and then writing a letter in cursive that went something along the lines of, "Plant this seed and soon you will discover who is friend and who is foe." She then got a phone call and proceeded pass the shops to a hotel lobby, where she had an altercation with some other guy over the money in her suitcase. After that, she ran back to the room she'd slept in earlier, and grabbed the first audience person standing next to her to go inside and shut and locked the door behind them, disappointing the rest of us who'd been following her up to that point. Evidently she'd just initiated one of those secret 1-on-1 encounters I'd heard about in this production.

- At this point I decided to follow the man again, who was having a brawl with some other guy I didn't recognize in a location I forget, but they wound up shaking hands later. In the process of trying to get a better view of the fight, I tripped over part of the staging, momentarily drawing the attention of some of the audience, although it went back to the fight again.

- The man left from there and eventually walked into one of the stores and unlocked the back door, which revealed a lifeless teal-gowned woman I hadn't seen before lying on a counter (at this point I was wondering, how many people are there to follow in this entire production...), and a white masked audience member who was already in the room observing her (which also begged the question, how did this person get here alone with her in the first place???). The man proceeded to investigate her body like someone conducting an autopsy, until the woman suddenly awoke and subdued the man on the counter on the spot with a few crazy moves (meanwhile, the rest of us were trying to avoid getting in their way since this room was pretty small and cramped). Their struggle eventually moved outside, where another man and woman I hadn't seen before took hold of the woman and carried her back to a wall at the end of the passageway and lifted her up in a cross-like formation. I didn't stick around long to watch them them, though, as the man I'd been following headed off in the opposite.

- Soon after, I caught him spying on yet another man who was sitting shirtless at the other end of the alley. That man suddenly got up and starting running down the street towards the other wall where I'd left the three folks from earlier, with a group of people who'd been watching him chasing after him, and the guy I was tailing after chasing him also. This effect of me chasing after someone who's chasing after someone who is also being chased by other audience members who aren't paying attention to the guy I'm chasing after happened a lot. It felt really weird.

- This procession led to a room where apparently a rave party was going on. Needless to say...

3. The Macbethian storyline (middle of second cycle->end of third cycle for me)

- The rave was complete with laser lights and the strobe lights flashing on/off with the music, creating that bizarre visual effect where it looked like you were seeing everything happen in snapshot moments. Usually in other media with the same kind of macabre grimness, they do this when someone is getting murdered or something, so it kinda freaked me out, although moreso because...

- The previously shirtless man (now with shirt on) was having a rave-orgy with the two women and man I'd seen earlier, complete with the frenzied dancing and them getting all over each other and the women getting topless and their male companion naked while wearing a giant goat's head-mask, and at one point they brought out a miniature naked baby covered in blood from a fountain or something. This was the infamous orgy scene that the online reviews speak of from this production - and indeed it was very surreal and freaky. It was also at this point that I realized the guy was Macbeth and the other three were the three witches, although one of the three was male here.

Apparently this is supposed to be the scene from the original play where the witches reveal to Macbeth what will cause his downfall (the armored/goat? head representing Macduff, the bloody child representing someone borne of no woman, and the tree branches representing the movement of the wood from a forest).

- By this point I'd lost the man I was originally following to get up to this point, so I decided to follow Macbeth instead, which was proving difficult to do since it seemed like everyone in the audience nearby was trying to follow him. This led to a bar, where one of the black-masked workers blocked me off from entering an area already full of other folks. Macbeth was having an altercation with someone which led to a one-on-one bar fight, and resulted in Macbeth tossing the other man over a counter and then moving behind it to kill him off-screen. From what I'd read of the production, I inferred that the other man (who was wearing suspenders, which is how I recognized him from that point onwards) was Banquo. Not quite consistent with the play but same effect.

- After this, Macbeth meets up with his wife in the middle of the street shop area for a brief make-out moment before suddenly heading downstairs. A lot of people were making their way down the stairs at this point. I had no idea which stairway I was on anymore, but I did noticed a stain-glassed window above the last one I was on.

- This led to a banquet-prepared table elevated on a stage with 8 or 9 people already seated, including the three witches from earlier. The audience area was already pretty full by this point (I'm guessing they'd followed the others to get there) and Macbeth and his wife took their seats at the opposite ends of the table. Everyone started to act in slow motion in turn with the sudden background music, and a bloody covered Banquo showed up from behind Macbeth and moved slowly towards his spot at the table, while glaring solely at his murderer. It all felt surreal. I didn't realize who most of these people were until mulling over it afterwards when I'd figured some of the others out from later scenes.

I didn't really understand the banquet scene after this point as everyone at the table started to slowly make out with whoever was sitting next to them: Macbeth and the woman to his left who I realized later was lady Macduff, Macduff and lady Macduff, Malcolm and the teal witch, Duncan and the other blonde witch, Duncan and Malcolm, Banquo and the blonde witch, Banquo and the male witch, lady Macbeth and the male witch... yeah I'm just doing permutations of everyone by their positions at the table, although I do distinctly recall some of them. Seriously it was weird to see the bloody Banquo make out with the male witch.

Midway through this, Macbeth started crawling under the table while Duncan climbed on top of it to do some kind of majestic pose, and then they scattered.

- I wound up on an upper floor where Macbeth was trying to make out with and then beat up a woman I didn't quite recognize in a manner such that I wasn't sure if he was trying to rape her or kill her (considering that he does the same thing with lady Macbeth several times in their bedroom). Eventually he left her on the floor. From reading impressions later I realize that he was murdering lady Macduff in this scene, although it was kinda confusing because...

- Macbeth was suddenly acting all buddy-buddy with the guy in the suspenders, Banquo? I think by this point the loop had started over again, as all of the scenes that followed this matched the beginning of the play leading up to the banquet again.

- Macbeth went into a lobby area where he ran into the three witches, who proceeded to dance with him. I was afraid it would turn into another rave-orgy scene but it was comparably tamer this time (clothes were kept on), with the witches dancing around and in front of Macbeth somewhat suggestively, particularly the male witch who did a split in front of him.

- I followed Macbeth from here to a room with his wife, a bed and a bathtub in the middle, the one pictured in some of the press coverage for the play. They had a bit of a make out-altercation-makeout moment, and then they both left...

- Macbeth headed over to the graveyard area where he attacked-prayed-attacked? a statue or gravestone in the area, and then attempted to climb one of the walls onto the ceiling. That was weird.

- He headed downstairs several flights from here. At the bottom in a area distinct from the banquet scene, there was a ball going on with all of the major Macbethian characters ballroom dancing in a circle, except for the pregnant lady Macduff, who was clearly being left out and then at one point fainted or laid on the ground in front of a housekeeper (speaking of which where the hell did the housekeeper come from?). It was another spectacle to witness, and I noticed Duncan and lady Macbeth leaving from the dance early, but neglected to follow them in favor of sticking through Macbeth's cycle.

- The dance suddenly ended and one of the witches took center spotlight while everyone went their separate ways. I tried to follow Macbeth at this point but lost him for a while. I wound up in the hotel lobby area again, and saw Banquo (or suspenders man) making out with one of the female witches and was pretty confused. Why is he alone with a witch? or I guess why does it matter anyway.

- The witch then split off to reunite with her two fellow witches at the phone booths in the lobby, where they all danced inside them for a bit. I get the feeling that's mostly what they do in this play, dance seductively.

- I started following the male witch here, having almost given up on Macbeth, when I heard voices and followed those back to Macbeth and the lady's bedroom again, where they were having a serious fight this time over cabinets and stuff, a lot rougher than last time. Apparently this is where lady Macbeth calls her husband out for being a weakling at starting to waver over the prospect of murdering Duncan, although it felt more like Macbeth was beating up his wife here. He left the room right after this...

- leading us to a bed where Duncan was sleeping in his quarters. Macbeth took the pillows next to him and smothered Duncan to death for a minute or so while the king tried to struggle under the covers. Once the deed was finally over, Macbeth did a dramatic motion with the pillows causing what it seemed like one of the pillows to burst and pillow feathers flew everywhere.

- He then rushed back to his bedroom to confirm to his wife that the deed was done, though he apparently lamented it. He stripped naked and got into the bathtub while trying to wash the blood off of his hands (which was confusing since there wasn't any blood involved in the murder scene? where did the blood come from?). Lady Macbeth consoled him from the bathtub, and then they both got into bed for a bit and just lay there.

- Eventually Macbeth got up, put on his clothes up to his pants and wandered to the alleyway where he sat down shirtless in the scene that I remembered running into him at. In anticipation of what was coming, I ran down the rest of the street towards the scene of the rave again (which apparently was actually Hecate's bar, a mirror image of the Manderley bar that we'd entered at the beginning), where the strobe light and music had already started and the witches gathered with the people following them standing around. Macbeth came in soon after at the scene happened again, although I viewed it from a different angle.

- I proceeded to follow the male witch after this point, as I already knew what would be happening on Macbeth's end from now. He wandered into a shower room where one of the audience members helped give him a towel and other stuff, which I'm guessing was relevant to another one-on-one interaction. I heard screams coming from another direction at this point, so I followed them...

- to find lady Macbeth yelling while staring at her hands, the scene in which she hallucinates seeing blood stains on them in the original play, while surrounded by a group of audience members. She grabbed one of them up close and whispered something to that person while kissing their mask.

- Macbeth showed up, having just killed Banquo, and they both reunited for a bit before heading down for the banquet scene again.

- The banquet scene repeated itself as before, except this time it ended with Macduff forcing the beneath-table crawling Macbeth to climb up and face a noose that was being lowered from the ceiling. He hesitated in front of it for a few moments before someone else (I think Banquo?) pushed him into the noose, where the lights suddenly went out as he hanged from it, initially struggling for his life until finally dying. So to speak.

- Everyone started heading out at this point, up a few flights of stairs, back into the Manderley where people were getting drinks and talking while a black woman was singing jazz songs on the stage.

- As I headed out, I bought the book they were advertising with the story explanations (although a bit minimal to be honest), character relationship chart and interviews just cause I figured I likely wouldn't be seeing this again. They let us keep our masks on the way out (not allowed to reuse for sanitary reasons) and someone by the door was giving people free hot apple cider and postcards for the rooftop restaurant.

4. For reference, the scenes from Macbeth that I did manage to catch and recognize here:

- Macbeth and Banquo
- Macbeth encountering the three witches for the first time (no Banquo though)
- Macbeth consorting with his wife to murder Duncan
- the festivities when Duncan arrives at Castle Macbeth (or hotel here?) with his party of Malcolm, Macduff and co. one of the only scenes that had all of the Macbethian characters present at the same time
- Macbeth having second thoughts in front of his wife right before...
- he murders Duncan in his sleep
- Macbeth being consoled by his wife after the act
- the three witches passing three prophetic warnings to Macbeth about his downfall
- Banquo's death
- the banquet where Banquo's ghost shows up - the other scene that had all Macbethian characters present at the same time, although I was confused as to why Duncan was there when he should've been dead.
- the death of lady Macduff (who was pregnant here in placing of having children)
- Lady Macbeth hallucinating about the blood on her hands
- Macduff killing Macbeth at the end

If I ever were to see this again, I would try to follow Macduff and lady Macbeth more. And maybe one of the witches, although I did see a fair number of scenes with them. Apparently I missed Hecate also, as she spends most of her time sitting around in the bar where the rave happened.

Overall, Sleep No More was a rather unique and intense experience, even though it was a bit nonsensical at times and the nudity and other more risque elements were a bit of a step out of the original Shakespeare material. If it weren't in this kind of an intense immersive and macabre context with the Macbeth story, I probably wouldn't have been that okay with it. I really appreciated the novelty of the experience, though; it reminds me of the adventure games where you explore around while the characters in the game go about doing their own thing in real time, and you have the option of freely exploring or trying to follow people to be present at key moments, sort of like an advanced choose-your-own-adventure game, only this was acted out live. The experience of being the first or second person in line chasing after an actor in the midst of an intense moment felt really thrilling, although I'm not sure if I'd really want to get involved in the one-on-one interactions as much... Might be a little too much for my comfort zone.

I'm really sore right now from all of that running up and down staircases and semi-regularly tripping over random stage props in the dark and people, though. Been limping most of the day and one of my legs feels like it's cramped up. But it's a small price to pay, I guess.