Sleep No More
London based theater company Punchdrunk has transformed an old club in Chelsea into a nightmarish 5-floor labyrinth for their play Sleep No More, a combination of Shakespeare’s Macbeth and Hitchcock’s Rebecca. I’ve been helping to prepare the set, which has given me an inside look at how the best of immersive theater is done. Between the phenomenal set design, intimate and chilling encounters with characters throughout the performance and the well crafted alternate reality game that lead up to the opening, it’s no wonder that Punchdrunk has such a cult following. The experience is addicting. (SPOILER ALERT!)
Sleep No More takes place in The McKittrick Hotel. To enter, you go through a pitch black labyrinth which empties out into a 1930s jazz bar. To go beyond the jazz bar, you must put on a traditional Venetian style mask (see a photo here) and get on the elevator. The masks help maintain the solitary atmosphere while at the same time making the mask-less actors stand out from the audience members. You are pushed out of the elevator in small groups on different floors.
The opening scene (if you can find it in time from wherever the elevator man dumped you off) is a silent, slow-motion banquet in the ballroom. The tense meal ends with the 12 actors scattering in different directions. The audience scatters, too, as they break into small groups following different characters through the hotel. You must decide who to follow, if anyone.
Since the audience can roam freely, every detail of the set counts. Reading through papers in a desk, turning over discarded toys in a child’s room or examining photographs on the wall reveal depth and complexity in the story. Movement in space can also function as movement in time. Going from an infant’s room to the adjacent graveyard scene with an abandoned black cradle makes it clear that the child didn’t make it. I walked through these rooms just after watching the still-pregnant mother fight with her husband in an elaborate choreographed struggle atop the kitchen cupboards.
This is probably the most ingenious aspect of Sleep No More. The set is non-linear and interactive. Moving through space will move you to different times in the narrative and the more you dig through the set’s details, the more you learn about what is happening. The performance itself, though, is very linear. The impeccable timing of characters crossing paths to speechlessly engage in scenes with one another moves the story along to a dramatic ending. You could be following a character who was just left one scene and see them enter upon another scene in progress with perfect timing to begin an encounter there.
Here’s an example — at one point, I followed a character into a rave-like bacchanal. After about 10 minutes, he leaves the scene and I along with maybe ⅓ of the audience members watching follow him down the hall to a dark bar. There is a man there alone. The character from the baccanal fights him and, after a long struggle, smashes his head in behind the bar and goes back to the baccanal. Almost the the audience members follow, but three of us stay behind in the bar. A bartender shows up moments later to clean up the mess when suddenly another character with a bloodied face enters from the opposite side of the room and confronts the bartender.
Another example — a man is asleep in a bed. His lover shows up. They engage in a violent struggle, which the audience members have to constantly shift to avoid. The fight clearly arouses the woman. He leaves in a huff. She undresses and stands crazed on the edge of a full bath tub in the middle of the room. Eventually she puts on a dressing gown. All this time there are muffled thumps and banging on the floor above, and I worry that I am missing something more exciting elsewhere (but what could be more exciting?). Her lover comes back, running, frantic and bloody. He strips and gets into the bathtub to scrub the blood off. She comes to help him.
Minute actions and individual encounters heighten the intimacy of experiencing scenes up close and in the round. You can read over a character’s shoulder as he types out a letter or watch every delicate motion of stringing a locket on a chain. The only opportunity to hear a character speak is through a one-on-one encounter if they pull you with them behind a closed door.
And when when it’s all over and you talk with your friends afterword about what you experienced, you won’t believe them and they won’t believe you. There was so much to see. It was all so spectacular that it’s hard to believe so much transpired in 2 hours.
It’s not surprising that a theater experience like this would have an alternate reality game to promote it. It was called Gallow Green. A website of green text on a black background offered Shakespear-like riddles.
The discussion boards of Sleep No More’s Facebook Page went wild for a week as players worked through to the puzzles together. Three of the 12 answers were offered up at live events, first one in Boston and then two in New York. One puzzle answer was found in a London cemetery. I kept up with the game and made it out to one of the New York events, which involved procuring protective amulets through individual encounters with an actor near the Central Park Carousel at night.
The second New York event entailed a banquet in an abandoned building. That was where new photos of the set were leaked to the public via a USB stick hidden in the loaf of bread (the photos of the set in this post are from that USB stick). The answer to the final riddled served up a phone number where players could leave messages to request a meeting with the Clairvoyant. Three winners were chosen for meetings. Accounts were posted on the Facebook page discussion boards.
I attended a performance on Wednesday night and intend to reread Macbeth before I go to another performance next week. Sleep No More is running until mid-April. I couldn’t recommend it more.
This is amazing! Nice review.