“Sleep No More,” with its mysterious and puzzling allure, has attracted no shortage of celebrities, either. I saw an audience member receive a one-on-one with an actor who was playing a patient of the sanitarium, and during the encounter, she pulled the man into a dark room and slammed the door, and it remains a mystery what happened in that room. One-on-ones are rare encounters during the show when an actor will pull you aside, remove your mask and act out a scene just for you. Those “one-on-ones,” are actually an integral and unique part of the “Sleep No More” immersive experience. “People want to collect all the one-on-ones or get as many as they can.” “There’s definitely an element of trying to win ‘Sleep No More,’” said Kathryn Yu, a virtual reality designer in an interview with the New York Times. The many subtle hints scattered throughout have led a lot of people to try to ‘ game’ “Sleep No More” the show has since adapted to this by continually adding easter eggs to reward repeat visitors.
Most rooms are dimly lit, and most of the artifacts are illegible, but if you go looking, there are many hints scattered throughout the hotel that give a lot of context as to what life is really like in this unique fictional setting. All of the rooms are elaborately decorated that make each setting a real step into the past, reflective of the historical period, whether it’s the taxidermied animals on The High Street of Gallow Green, or the beds of the fifth floor sanitarium. Most of my experience consisted of exploring different rooms and running after where the audience was running, to try to see where the storyline was headed. Considering that there are separate and simultaneous performances of separate plotlines of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, no “Sleep No More” experience is the same, even if you stick together with whoever you’re going with. As a result, anyone who sees “Sleep No More” will be experiencing the show in silence with anonymous, haunting masked audience members, most of whom are just as confused and curious as you are.Īudience members are encouraged to pave their own “Sleep No More” journey. The new mask is cut above the nose and is worn along with KN95 masks that are distributed at the door. Before the pandemic, audience members at “Sleep No More” donned avian-like masks, eerily similar to the ones worn by bubonic plague doctors in medieval times. The most notable difference in the post-COVID, fictitious setting of Gallow Green, Scotland: the masks. “Sleep No More” reopened February 14th, after a two-year hiatus due to the COVID-19 pandemic, with a new commitment to immersion and a hope to continue its legacy as a revolutionary concept in the theater world. After adjusting into the time period, guests are told to put on plastic masks designated for audience members, and are ushered into a freight elevator, where their journey begins. The reason for this is at the end of the maze, you emerge into the Manderley Bar, the hotel’s gaudy, elaborately decorated and fascinating 1930s jazz bar. Upon entering and checking any coats, visitors receive a playing card as a ticket, and enter a dark maze, which many guests have likened to traveling back in time.
I knew the basics: actors and actresses would be performing the story of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, devoid of any dialogue, simultaneously in multiple rooms throughout the hotel, which had been abandoned and condemned in 1939.
When I entered the dimly lit foyer of the warehouse known as the McKittrick Hotel in Chelsea, I had no idea what awaited me, which was a disturbing but deeply exciting feeling.
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