Behind the closed doors of 'Sleep No More'
In this theater publicity image released by the O+M Co., Luke Murphy is shown in a scene from "Sleep No More," performing at The McKittrick Hotel in New York. Credit: AP
For months, I've been tempted to spend a night at the McKittrick Hotel, tantalized by tales of mysterious goings-on in the far-far west stretches of Chelsea, and piqued by reports of this or that celebrity spotted wandering the halls wearing a spooky white mask.
With Broadway and spider-happenings at a lull, finally, I checked out the McKittrick Hotel. This is not the same as checking in, because the "hotel" -- named after one in Alfred Hitchcock's "Vertigo" -- has been carved out of a nondescript five-story redbrick building, once a warehouse, more recently a disco or several.
And this is the enchanting/enchanted setting for "Sleep No More," the site-specific environmental extravaganza created by a London group called Punchdrunk for a brief visit, which won a bunch of awards and has been extended through Labor Day.
Punchdrunk, which once mixed "Romeo and Juliet" with Stravinsky's "The Firebird" in an old factory and first staged "Sleep No More" in an abandoned Victorian school, has meticulously decorated more than 90 rooms for us to explore -- up and down stairs and around dark hallways -- in search of ongoing simultaneous evocations of "Macbeth" and Hitchcock's Oscar-winning 1940 noir "Rebecca."
The title comes from Macbeth's guilty ravings after he killed poor old King Duncan: "Methought I heard a voice cry, 'Sleep no more! Macbeth doth murder sleep!' "
I tell you this on faith, because, frankly, I didn't get much of that.
I had a wonderful time exploring the dimly lit rooms, watching a tall man in a white lab coat wash bloody clothes in an old bathtub, pecking out a few words on the Underwood typewriter in what I think was a 19th century psychiatrist's study, gingerly picking up horrifying antique surgical instruments at a Victorian psychiatric infirmary, snooping for hidden snippets of "Macbeth" in each room, carefully turning the pages of a crumbling book, cringing at the baby carriage in the cemetery, even choosing a peppermint from what appeared to be ancient apothecary jars in a beautiful little store.
But "Macbeth?" "Rebecca?" Not so much. For starters, nobody talks. Not the actors. Not the audience, distinguishable from the performers by our blank duckbill masks -- think commedia dell'arte and the orgy partygoers in Stanley Kubrick's "Eyes Wide Shut."
I accept the likelihood that my inability to follow plot lines is my own fault. Friends had recommended that I pick a character and follow him/her around from room to room. But that meant I had to follow hoards of fellow masked observers, who had obviously been given the same advice.
From the start of the two-hour adventure, which begins with an optional drink in a cozy cabaret/speakeasy, our host tells us that we are free to go on our own. He didn't say that if I did so, I might not ever be able to identify characters listed in the program (distributed after) as Bald Witch, Sexy Witch, Hecate or Bellhop -- or see anyone naked.
The arts, we are told, can teach us about ourselves. What I learned is that I don't like to follow crowds and that, indeed, living in New York means always believing that someone else is at a better party.
I also learned that I'm a shameless coward. Don't look to me to turn the first knob on a dark door or to venture alone into an empty room with no windows. I was anxious enough just having to check my purse at the entrance. (Strongly recommended, but not required.)
"Sleep No More" is what Punchdrunk directors Felix Barrett and Colin Marsh refer to as "immersive" theater, which means we're free to immerse ourselves in as little or as much in whatever dark hallway we please. The closest I've had to the experience was "Tamara," which played the Park Avenue Armory in 1987 but which I saw a few years earlier in a "mansion" created from a big old American Legion Hall in Hollywood.
"Tamara" had interlocking stories happening all over the place, but there were words and a fancy-dressed, psychosexual murder-mystery plot about early Fascism in 1920s Italy and Art-Deco painter Tamara de Lempicka.
"Sleep No More" is more of an art installation, more seriously beautiful, more nuanced than "Tamara." But it still helps if you have a passion for haunted houses. It also helps to wear comfortable shoes.
WHEN | WHERE "Sleep No More," McKittrick Hotel, 530 W. 27th St., Monday-Thursday at 8 p.m., Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m. and midnight.
INFO $75 Monday-Wednesday, $85 Thursday and late performances Friday and Saturday, $95 Friday and Saturday. Call 866-811-4111 or visit sleepnomorenyc.com.
