Sleep No More

Good afternoon to my selected few, you are once again the lucky ones who have wisely chosen to read this blog. I have just returned from my latest and greatest trip to the great city of New York where I attended a fantastic theatrical piece titled Sleep No More. Now if you live in Boston and have heard of it before that's because it played in Brookline last year and had I really known more about it you can be sure I would have gone to that one too. Now onto the description.
Sleep No More is British theater troupe's totally fucked up rendition of Shakespeare's Macbeth although if you weren't aware going in you would have no way of knowing this, hell I knew this headed in and still couldn't put any correlation between the two. The warehouse that was converted into the McKittrick Hotel for such an event was enormous, I along with my beautiful counterpart for the evening spent three hours exploring the top two of three floors without ever making it to the third floor, I say the third floor instead of the first or even the second you see because even though the show is housed within three floors the wonderment of the event starts right when you walk through the doors. Once inside you are greeted by the hotel concierge who checks the reservation before handing you a simple playing card, this card is to be your ticket for what is to come next. Once the formalities of purchase are finished you are whisked up to the second floor passing suites of armor along the way perfectly transforming your time frame from the new millennium into the swinging jazz age of the nineteen-twenties or perhaps early thirties. Crossing and weaving through almost pitch dark hallways you are lead behind a large draped doorway showcasing the bar complete with three piece jazz band although that description is to come later for now we will still to the show and the bar will come after, for now all I will explain is that the tour guide if you wish to call him that calls out cards and you are allowed inside as he calls them, lucky me to be carrying a joker what he called 'wild' although why I never found out perhaps I could have hopped into any group or something of that nature, it did not allow me to drink for free however. Anyways I have strayed from the plot for long enough and I know you must be quivering with anticipation of the show at this point perhaps feeling a bit moist just thinking about the age of gangsters and flappers and jazz swing. Makes me long for an extended cigarette holder and a snappy suit just thinking about it, oh sorry still straying back to the description!

Once your card has been called you are handed a white mask covering your whole face and distorting your mouth into some kind of duck bill making any kind of under mask kissing impossible as I realized at once. Stopping on the fourth floor you are encouraged to find your own route through the hotel as there is no set path and the experience is unique to everyone. Naturally I wanted to see everything and decided the best path was to start at the top and work my way down. Once we had stepped onto the floor, my companion and I, we were at once thrown into the inner workings of a mental hospital room filled with beds all empty save for one which had been filled with potatoes disguised to look like a sleeping patient. The creepy room would have been enough for me but the amazing thing about this show isn't just the scenery or the cast of characters or even the uniqueness of it all but rather the gross attention to detail inside the show, you are allowed and encouraged to touch everything, go through every drawer in every bedside table and desk, open every display and read all of the different bottle labels as well as the multiple page patient charts discussing the deterioration of each missing patient. Naturally I did just that trying to find some hidden clue about something that would make my experience just that much more special, something only I would find out, some kind of clue that would allow me to be ahead of everyone, but alas all I did was thoroughly confuse myself trying to read each booklet and page of every open book which had most likely already been thumbed through by some other playgoer and had obviously not been left on it initial page. Wandering some more we began to really notice the silence of it all as the only noises being made are the sounds of feet and the soft but eerie music playing throughout the whole show, small waves of anxiety and anticipation began to build inside of me as I made my way from one room to the next, finding a room of bath tubs and testing the warmth of the water in the one tub containing any. Still further into the floor we suddenly found ourselves outside, although not really, more like a hedge labyrinth during winter when all of the shrubs were bare. Weaving our way through a group of people had gathered at what had initially seemed to be a small circular shed, everyone was peeping through the holes in the wood trying to see what was inside, having to see the inside I did the same but failed to notice what everyone was looking at, pulling away in a bit of disappointment I suddenly realized why I had seen nothing as the grim nurse who was just inside was now outside inviting one of the audience to join her. Once the door had closed behind them we continued on our path wanting to see everything else and make our way downstairs. Not before finding the operating room though, with its stage around the one table and its handwritten chalk messages covering every inch of the room, spooky shit there as the creepy nurse walked in and began itemizing the tools and writing new things on the wall. As she left so did we down to the third floor, an entire shop corner of a town complete with an apothecary, a taxidermy, a tailor, a candy shop (filled with real edible candy nonetheless), and lets not forget the ever important bar room. It was in this bar room that we spent the majority of our time as the actors seemed to be coming in and out of it quite constantly and the bartender was always up to something, whether it was dancing on the pool table with a female actress or apparently poisoning a lowly male. At one point he even stormed into another shop grabbed a dead bird, a bone, and a small messae and attacked the taxidermist all over some apparent woman which I gathered from the note which simply said "We have her." Once the bar seemed to clear out we were the only people left save for one last masked soul, the bartender called up my companion and invited her to a drink with him, but not before following every path on her hand searching for something invisible to me. Soon we were lost though in the town center watching two characters, the apparently poisoned male and some new bald woman in a dress (who frightened off our friend the bartender) dancing some erotic love dance of apparent evil. As their dance continued into the streets we followed only to find a second woman waiting for them and the trio led us into a larger bar room where the large crowd had gathered following each of these characters here, even our old friend the barkeep was there if only for a moment as he skipped out before the next bit. Suddenly the music turned from calm and eerie to straight up Rammstein pulsing strobes exploded all over and a naked man with a goat head appeared standing on top of a table blood pouring all over him. The three dancing souls went into a fit as blood was smeared all over each and every one of them and the two women both lost the tops of their dresses for no apparent reason, oh except for the bloodied baby that was now being shared between both of them and breastfed! As the dancing continued for another minute or so it stopped as quickly as it began and all of the characters were gone save for one lone female still naked and writhing over the bar, until finally a totally new character came to her, comforted her and redressed the poor girl, still covered in blood.

It was right around this point where my female friend had to leave and we made our way back down to the bar where we were greeted by a small jazz trio singing "It Don't Mean a Thing" by Duke Ellington. The singer with her beautiful voice was joking to us that her drummer a lanky Asian man was very single and some girl should take him home. Soon we were joined by the actors leading other masked goers into the bar before unmasking them, the apparent selected souls. Once the band finished their set it was onto the DJ music while the bar remained open serving specialty gin and tonics and other drinks of the era, mmm mmm good.

So Sleep No More was everything I wanted it to be and more than that as I have already begun plans to see it again, and this time I will be following a totally new dialogue, it is truly a unique experience for those who aren't weak of heart, but be warned this show is NOT for everyone. You will panic at points and you will see some totally fucked up shit, what I have described to you is just a small portion of the whole experience. I have linked the New York Time Review as well for those who wish to do more reading on the subject, and if you think it is something you may want to see I would book tickets now as it is only running until September and most of the showings are already sold out.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/20/theater/sleep-no-more-from-punchdrunk-transforms-chelsea-warehouses.html?_r=1&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1307991199-PNPdg7jVs5Ha47XhbNCVbg

Ta-ta for now back tomorrow with another exciting topic