Sleep No More

This weekend I went to New York.

I went to New York specifically to see a show my sister Anne-E told me I should see. "It's different. You'll love it. That's all I'm going to tell you." From what she told me, I pictured intense but double sided conversations between men in dinner jackets and women in boas, smoking guns and the audience trying to figure out whodunit. But I was wrong.

The show was "Sleep No More."

This is not a play. I refuse to call it a play. It is a different kind of theatre completely, and it blew me away.

I'm going to put in a few spoilers here, so if you plan on seeing this show (It's playing for another couple if weeks, but good luck getting tickets) and you want to retain the element of surprise, stop reading now. I'm about to ruin it for you.

The show takes place in a hotel. Not a room in a hotel, the entire hotel. When you walk in they check your ID (21+ because there is an actual bar) and then they make you check your bag. You will want to check your bag because you will be walking - no, running - around the hotel, up and down five flights of stairs - in the dark. You will be rifling through papers and suitcases and reaching out to touch and feel and smell and taste the set and the props and such.

Once inside, the first thing they do is split people up. They want you away from people you know. And even if you run into your friends later, you might not recognize them because you are given a white mask which you must wear as you wander around the hotel. In the dark. Only the actors are maskless.

As you are led into the hotel, you are told not to speak to anyone. At all. No noise. But you are encouraged to touch things. You are allowed to open suitcases and pick up papers. You can sit in the furniture and stick your hand into the bathwater.

This show is loosely based on Macbeth. If you don't know what that is, I'm not sure I can help you. But it shouldn't stop you from appreciating Sleep No More. In fact, you don't even need to speak English, because even the actors do not speak. They communicate through intense gazes and then violent dances. The actors throw each other onto and over furniture, into walls and onto floors. They hang upside-down. Even when you have no idea what is going on plot-wise, and most of the time I didn't - it is amazing to watch. And if you get bored with what you are watching, you can wander elsewhere. You may follow whichever actor you choose and even hide out in a place where no one else is. I liked the room with the candy. Which you were allowed to eat. I though it was cool.

But it is not for the timid. My brother saw it and did not like it. He didn't understand it, I think. And if you are the kind of person who is looking for a distinct storyline or who wishes to be entertained, this is not for you. I also wandered into a room with heavy strobe lights and dance music, in which the actors performed a dance involving blood, a minotaur's head, nudity, and a baby being "ripped" from it's mother's body. There is nudity, blood, and murder. Read Macbeth - it's all in there.

I feel I have to post about this show because I can't get it out of my mind. I have been dreaming about it for the past two nights. When I got the tickets I just couldn't understand why anyone would want to go see it again, but now I get it. The three hours I spent there wasn't enough. I didn't see everything. I want to see it again. I want to do it again.