Sleep No More

I am currently on an airplane, flying from New York, having spent some time in the Boston area before heading down to New York for the last part of my vacation. As a Christmas present, my sister got me a ticket to Sleep No More, which... well, explaining what it is exactly is going to take much of this post. It is, technically speaking, a production of Macbeth, Shakespeare's dark villain protagonist (who, along with Richard III, is most certainly an inspiration behind modern characters like Tony Soprano, Walter White, and Frank Underwood.)

But to say that this is a production of the Scottish Play would be to give you the totally wrong impression.

Sleep No More, which has been running in Manhattan since 2011, is a combination of ballet, art installation, play, and most of all, a haunted house. In a sense, the experience actually feels like a live-action video game (its aesthetic feels very similar to Rapture from the Bioshock games, with its decadent 1939 jazz club look,) and to be clear, I mean that in a good way.

When you arrive at the McKittrick Hotel (which I believe is actually a building that contained several nightclubs, but has now been linked together for the purpose of this show,) you're led into a kind of  jazz club with live music. There's a real bar there, and you can wind your way back to this area as a kind of safe, calm spot (to extend the video game metaphor, this room is almost like the over-world hub or perhaps the pause screen.)

Each person who comes in is given a playing card, and according to your number, you'll be brought into a small room (and are thus separated from any friends who come with you.) This is where you get your quick rundown of the rules. Everyone is handed a white casanova mask. You put these on, and unless you're in the bar, the mask stays on. You are then herded onto an elevator, and the operator sends out a handful of people at a time, then takes you to a new floor, repeating until everyone has been sent out into the building.

Once sent forth, the experience is pretty free-form. There is a massive area to explore, with I believe five floors. You'll find rooms with mysterious objects in them, furnished like a detailed set (designed to stand up to close scrutiny.) For instance, I found myself first in a lower floor with what seemed like a long lounge and a bedroom, but other areas look like offices, shops, streets, graveyards, or spooky woods.

And throughout all of this, the performers go through their individual arcs. You might turn a corner and see someone not wearing the ghostly white mask you have on. Follow them and you will tend to see them meet and interact with others or do some kind of performance on their own, ranging from an incomprehensible card game to furiously typing a letter to scrawling on walls in chalk and then performing a dance as they wipe away the words.

All of this goes on throughout the night - apparently the performers repeat the cycle of their individual actions in three cycles, but I never saw the same thing twice.

And of course, adding to the haunting feeling of the show is that there is nearly no dialogue, and the performers are usually surrounded by a crowd of strange figures in those white casanova masks. It occurred to me that, though they are probably quite used to it by now, the experience might be creepier for the performers than for the audience.

Indeed, despite the absolutely spooky atmosphere that is achieved, I felt empowered. The mask grants a level of anonymity, and a strange compulsion to become part of the performance (though I recommend that you limit those impulses to a simple awareness of your own physicality and perhaps a willingness to maintain eye contact if one of the performers is looking at you.)

There were moments where I found myself hesitant to enter certain areas, but all in all, the mask dulled the natural instincts of fear and allowed me to push forward. With the mask, I was the haunting spirit, so what was there to be afraid of?

My status as a haunting spirit bearing witness to this tragedy served me well when I saw that a window in a small hut in the forest had opened, and one of the performers (playing which part in the play I have no idea) was babbling some strange prayer. She stopped, having seen me, and stared into my eyes. I did not break this gaze. After a while, she opened the door to the hut and drew me inside - alone.

And that's where the rules broke down in a fascinating way. First, she took off my mask, and then she sat me down in a chair. She poured a cup of tea for me and fed it to me by the spoonful. After she spilled it (a choreographed move, though a little did get on my pants,) she put the tea away and then placed her hands on my knees and began to tell me a story.

For the first time in hours, I heard speech - and not a grunt or errant curse, but a story. There was an amazing magic to that moment, in that hut wallpapered with pages cut out of a book that had been crumpled and cut in strange patterns. She had conjured me, the haunting spirit, and communed with me.

With the story ended, and an enigmatic whisper (some kind of warning, perhaps,) she put the mask back on my face and sent me out into the hotel/forest/world once more.

If you're in New York, I highly recommend it, though be warned, it's 21+. And if you go, for the love of all that is holy, wear comfortable shoes. You're going to be wandering around this building for several hours. I saw a woman in front of us in line in heels and I can't imagine that was fun.