::::WARNING --- VERY LONG AND
DETAILED WITH SPOILERS:::::
Last night (1/31/14) I saw the late
night (11:00PM) showing of Sleep No More; and sleep that night, I did not! I am
a born and raised new Yorker and have grown up surrounded by theater,
performing in and seeing shows since I was 7 or 8 years old, but somehow I must
have been living under a rock and had not ever heard about this show until I stumbled
upon an online article about it and knew I needed to see it ASAP. I quickly
convinced a friend to go with me and for the entire day beforehand I tried to
read everything and anything I could about the show. I wanted to be totally
prepped and know all the details, trips and tricks that I could find to get the
most “bang for my buck”… Most of what I read compared it to Macbeth meets
Hitchcock meets Disney’s Haunted Mansion. I was so excited! My friend and I drove
into the city (from Long Island) and decided to grab a quick beer at The Eagle
NYC before heading over to wait on line. Well imagine my surprise when I realized
we were first on line! [Heart starts racing, excitement and adrenaline are
building] and then right at 10:45 on the dot, they open the doors and let us
in.
As we
walk in we see the coat check but b/c I felt the need to be so prepared I had
read about the mandatory $4(?) coat check and had decided it best if we didn’t bring
coats. We walked up to the check in counter and it was simple and quick, we
were given a playing card that we were told was our room key for the evening
and told to head down a hall to our right. I was HOOKED! Every staff member
seamed kind and gracious and totally in character as if they really were
workers at a fancy upscale hotel. A quick trip through a pitch black maze led
me and my partner in crime to the “speakeasy style bar”. Once inside we got
cocktails and found a seat. Yes the cocktails were a little pricy, $22 for two
but they were delicious and so fitting for the theme (champagne and elderflower
liquor and something with absinthe that tasted like black licorice). We
actually ended up having 3 cocktails each in the 25minutes or so we were inside
the bar, then our number was called (ace of spades) and we got escorted into a
second room where we were given our masks, told the rules and then put onto a
giant elevator.
One we
got on the elevator I was holding onto my friends hand for dear life, I was
nervous, excited, slightly scared and a little tipsy from downing 3 glasses of champagne
in about 20 minutes. We were told that the bar we started in was on the second floor
incase at any time during the journey we wanted to return to it. We rode the
elevator and got off on what I believe to be the 5th floor. My
friend and I had made a plan in advance, the goal was to try to stay together
for the first hour and just explore all that we could on all the floors,
mapping out the place, opening drawers, reading books, to get hints and tips
and clues about the storyline. This started well and good in the nursery room
with the hanging headless babies (weird and creepy) and the bedroom next to it
with some small beds and night tables and boxes of things to read and rattle
though. But after doing this for no more than 5 minutes we found a cast member.
A pregnant women in a blue velvet gown was grabbing at her stomach, then I followed
her as she climbed a bookcase to pray to a stature in the corner, watched her
pack a bag full of baby clothes and blankets and then frantically rush away (I followed
her down a flight ((or 2)) of stairs I believe) to the hotel lobby where she
was met by a housekeeper looking woman who was trying to feed her (poisoned?)
milk, and then a man who obviously didn’t want her to drink the milk, they did
a beautiful dance and the man and the housekeeper left and I watched as the
pregnant woman unpacked her suitcase and looked at all the baby clothes and put
them into a dresser. It was very moving, she seemed so sad and I just wanted to
reach out and help her. Who was this
housekeeper? What was with the milk? Why did the man not want her to drink it? Why
did she look so sad?
Fast
forward a few minutes and I was back on the 5th floor (I needed to
use the bathroom) and I found myself basically alone in the hospital ward, rows
and rows of hospital beds in one room and rows and rows of bathtubs in the
other. I was frantic, rushing around the beds, sitting on each one, opening each
night table drawer going through the contents for a clue on to what this was,
who was the pregnant lady? Why didn’t she just come to the hospital instead of
the hotel lobby? Why were all of these beds empty? Why was only one of the
bathtubs full of warm water? As all of these thoughts wandered though my head I
heard a woman and crowd gathered as she laid on a bed, and then got up, fell to
the floor and then rushed to the bathtub room where a doctor stripped her of
her clothes (yes they really get naked) and she got into the bathtub where she
was screaming and writhing and there was blood and thrashing… it was intense! (I’ve
realized that this must be the “out, out damn spot” scene from Macbeth) Now the
story is starting to make even more sense and I’m getting enthralled with the
characters stories.
Leaving
the bathtub scene I needed a minute to regroup and found myself on the third
floor wondering though the cemetery and the crumbled courtyard. The air felt
cool and damp as if I were actually outside the ground was covered in dirt and
it was so dark that I actually started to feel like I was outside. Wandering through
this I came upon what I now believe to be Macbeth’s bedroom. The set was lush
and beautiful with dressers, and tables and a beautiful bed with giant headboard,
and a bathtub on a platform in. Lady Macbeth was inside dancing around the
bathtub and then she ended up in this raised glass enclosed box where she did a
gorgeous dance and then Macbeth came in. From what I had pieced together I realized
that Macbeth must have earlier on killed the king (I didn’t see this), Lady Macbeth
had the “blood on her hands” (guilt) and was now in her bedroom seducing Macbeth
for some post murder love time. This dance was my favorite b/c they used all of
the set to the full advantage; they would dance on the bed, on the dressers, jump from dressers to the floor, dance around
the rim of the bathtub. And at the end he redresses her and slowly puts on her
shoes and they get dressed as if they are going for a night out on the town
(well, wouldn’t anyone who just committed a murder go out for a nice night on
the town!? LMAO)
I
followed them for a few minutes and ended up in the basement for what I
realized was the first ballroom scene. A beautiful group dance full of lifts,
and jumps with great music. And the banquet hall set is MAGNIFICENT! Tall ceilings,
a huge banquet table, beautiful wood inlayed floors. And Oh, Look! There’s the
pregnant lady from the beginning again and she’s still pregnant so I guess the
baby didn’t die. There’s a blond male dancer with his shirt open low and a lot
of eyeliner on, I wonder if he’s the male witch!? And why are these girls’
dresses so revealing, I think I just saw another boob! But all in all the dance
was cool and it was neat to see the different storylines sort of intertwine even
if I still didn’t understand it all. After the dance most of the audience
members went about their seperate ways but I waited and watched the one dancer
rip off her wig and perform an intense lyrical/modern dance with evil ominous
music. She was obviously the “blad witch” that I’d read about and her character
was in disguise at the ball. At this point I realized that I must have just completed
1 full “cycle” of the show b/c from what I had read each cycle lasts about an
hour and ends with a ballroom scene. So now, 1 hour into the performance, and even
though my initial intentions were to spend the beginning just searching around
and scoping out the whole space, I became immersed in the storylines and wanted
to know more, I wanted to piece it all together and somehow make sense of this strange
dreamlike world that was in front of me. I was like a kid in a candy store, I had
a taste and I needed more.
Since the
ballroom scene had just ended in the basement I went up one floor and saw yet
another murder scene of a man going to sleep in a bed and then another man
coming to suffocate him in his sleep and the two more guys coming and talking
the dead body away and trying to cover up the murder. Was this the initial
Murder when Macbeth Kills the king of Scotland and blames it on the sleeping
night watch!? I’d seen so much of what happens after Macbeth and the Lady do
the killing in the first cycle, maybe now I’d actually seen the killing. Pretty
cool but anyway I wanted to explore and I
had started my adventure on the 5th floor the first time so I thought
I’d take a different approach and try to investigate the 3rd and 4th
floors for a bit more so up I went. I found the shops on the 4th
floor interesting and the set design was great. Taxidermy shop? Privet investigator?
Long hallways and rooms that I didn’t even know were there before. But all of
the sudden I felt a strange feeling. I felt anxious and unsure, I felt myself
rushing from room to room and the inner monologue in my head was telling me I needed
to go faster, to find more, to search and explore and while the inner theater
geek in me was loving every minute of it, it started to become a little too
much for me to handle. My face was sweaty under the masque, I was hot from
rushing around, it was dark and loud so I decided to find the bathroom on the 5th
floor again and take a little 2 minute breather and then I decided to head back
down to the second floor bar from the beginning and see what was going on there.
I entered and suddenly it seemed like the story was simultaneously paused and
still occurring. As I wrote earlier the bar is beautiful and lush with red velvet
tablecloths, a baby grand piano and now a jazzy singer was crooning some oldies
at the mic. Everyone had their masks off and was now allowed to talk, but the
bartenders and wait staff were still 100% in character. Talking about the
comings and goings of the time (as if it was the 1930s) I went up to the bar, ordered
a beer and drank it while I sat down and took a 10 minute break. I felt
refreshed and revived and was now ready to continue on with the show.
Putting
my mask back on and walking back to the stairwell I didn’t know what direction
to take now. I had gone in with hopes of searching and exploring and then got
caught up in the dance and the action and the drama. Then when I tried to
explore on my own my mind go the best of me and I got exhausted. I decided I was
going to try and go floor by floor and room by room and find action, stay and
watch it and then move on. It was going pretty well I saw the card game scene
in the cardboard box room with the fight at the end and the killing. I saw a
woman (maybe the pregnant lady) in the privet investigators office going through
photos of women with him. I got lost in the forest on the 5th floor
and wandered around there until I found the little straw hut in the corner. Only
one other audience member was outside and I stood for a while waiting with her
to see what was going to happen. A nurse looking woman opened a window and
looked out, a few more audience members passed and one more guy stayed to
watch. The witch lady ran out of the house and into the tree maze. I followed
her as best as I could (even though the tree maze gets a little confusing at
times) but then I found her and she was writing a message with a piece of chalk
on a tree, then she fainted. Then a doctor rushed over and picked her up and
revived her and they went back to the hut where the nurse (who just fainted)
examined the doctor (as if he was the sick one) and then she rocked him in a
rocking chair and then he left. At this point I was one of two other audience
members still watching the show she beckoned me into her hut and I accepted her
offer. I was getting a 1 on 1!!! OMG I was so excited. She locked me in the hut
and took off my mask and dried my face with a cloth napkin and placed it on my
lap. Then she poured me a cup of tea in a little tea cup with a saucer and
spoon and then she fed it to me off of the spoon while she told me a story of a
poor boy who explored the moon and the sun and the stars. It was totally
surreal and amazing, I didn’t really understand what she was talking about but I
didn’t care. I was in Heaven; I could have sat there listening to her talk
about the moon forever. I almost forgot there was a whole show going on around
us and our little hut in the woods. Once the story was done she opened the door
and let me out.
I wasn’t
sure where to go next, I’d pretty much seen every major thing I wanted to, or
so I thought… I still couldn’t figure out which store on the 4th
floor was the candy store and I was starting to get a little hungry. Running up
and down a 5 story hotel for over 2 hours will do that to one. But anyway I ended
up back in the cardboard box room and I thought I was going to get stuck
watching the same card game scene again (admittedly it wasn’t one of my
favorite scenes of the night) but I thought the room was neat so I stayed. Then
all of the sudden the bald witch was there again (I love her) and she was
dancing on a pool table with the boy witch. It was cool, they were sort of play
fighting, dancing, grinding (lol) and I started to think that this was the “witch
orgy” I’d red so much about but boy was I wrong. As these two witches left this
room everyone followed and we went down to another floor. As we were walking
the music was getting louder and louder and then all of the sudden we were in a
bar! It looked just like the bar on the second floor where I had enjoyed my
preshow cocktails (and took my little break at about 1.5 hours into the show,
but it wasn’t. It was dark and filled with fog and lots and lots of people were
packed in. The music kept getting louder and the strobe lights started and then
a “witch” behind me let out the loudest most blood curding scream I’d ever
heard that literally made me jump (and scream a little too). Then it started,
the boy witch was naked! The bald witch was naked! The boy witch put on a weird
animal head and poured blood on his naked body! The other witch brought out a
baby for a human sacrifice! WTF is going on here? All whilst strobe lights
blink and techno music blasts! Then pretty much everyone leaves and I decide to
follow the boy witch he goes into a small bathroom and there are only about 4
or 5 audience members in the room, he takes a shower to wash of the blood and
has what looks like a nervous breakdown (side effect of witch orgy raves
perhaps?) then he got dressed and led a bunch of us around for a while before I
ended up in the final banquet scene.
The
final banquet is amazing, enough said. I’d totally love to see this show again
and see how many things are similar and/or different from last night. Also the
friend I was with got 4 personal 1 on 1 experiences! So I’d love to experience
a different one next time! Basically I think everyone should see this show, its
inspiring, beautiful, dramatic, touching, and all around entertaining
