Theater Review: Sleep No More

Last night I went to see Sleep No More a joint production between A.R.T. and Punchdrunk. For this theatrical performance they transformed an old high school in Brookline (the Old Lincoln School on Boylston St) into a setting, the actors perform throughout space and the audience wanders through the rooms, sometimes stumbling upon scenes. And I do mean rooms, I've read that 44 rooms have been turned into sets. I don't know if I saw them all and I don't know if it matters.

I'm not sure what to call this. A play isn't right, immersive theater doesn't seem right to me either. There's some similarity to old hypertext adventures like Zork. It's more like Myst crossed with LARPing. But you're not really playing a roll, you're really an observer (though I've seen some comments to the contrary, I don't believe them). I've heard the new term hyperdrama used for it. Everyone's experience will be different and you will be separated from your group.

But there's still something missing from this description, the scenes are silent. Even silent films had title cards. I heard no dialog aside from some indistinct mutterings. The actors are certainly in character and have to improv a bit to deal with the audience in the room but still this misses the point that most things in this performance were vigorous and dynamic dance. Those expecting the narrative of theater will be disappointed, instead I think it's better to expect modern dance which is unfortunately something I'm not that familiar with interpreting.

And I wasn't expecting that because the show is described as a combination of Macbeth and Hitchcock! "Shakespeare’s fallen hero. Hitchcock’s shadow of suspense." The Hitchcock part is most clearly because of the music which is mostly taken from Bernard Hermann film scores. This threw me as I kept remembering the scenes from Vertigo and North by Northwest and other films that the music came from. There's a functioning bar and jazz club where you begin and end the evening; it's called the Manderley which is a reference to Hitchcock's Rebecca, though I don't see significance in that. Oh and it's kinda spooky, maybe that's a Hitchcock reference, but since it's a make your own choices experience, the manipulation of Hitchcock's camera is no where to be seen.

The plot, if your wanderings show you any of it, is Macbeth. The characters are there and the actions and the sets but not the dialog, which really is the first thing I think of when I think of Shakespeare. Well and the sets are odd too, yes there's a bedroom and forest (in the old auditorium) and there's a witches lair in the basement. There's also a room with hospital beds and bathtubs and taxidermy and a hotel lobby which I don't think were at all mentioned in the play. I'm fine with Macbeth being re-imagined into the 1930s, but I didn't get a lot of the recurring motifs such as birds.

The first room I entered had several desks and filling cabinets and a man typing. I leaned over his shoulder and saw something about falcons. The filling cabinets were filled with shredded paper and half of them had a single egg (some ostrich sized). Ummm, yeah. Other rooms had lots of taxidermy and feathers and skeletons from odd animals. Even many of the dance moves reminded me of birds. One actress had a (fake) very pregnant belly, I kept expecting her to give birth to an egg but it didn't happen (at least I didn't see it if it did).

Then I wandered through many more rooms but only a few times saw more than one actor at a time. I've come to the conclusion this is not the way to see this. Several postings on forums described people who were thrilled to interact with the extensive sets, but I don't think it really had any point. I flipped through some diaries expecting to find some clue-like thing instead I saw unintelligible scrawlings or "it was a dull day" repeated over and over like Jack Torrance in The Shining.

In fact there were more Kubrick references. As you enter you're told to remain silent and given a mask that you have to wear. It's white and oddly shaped and reminded me of Eyes Wide Shut. I think the point is really so the audience knows who else is in the audience as opposed to an actor and to hide other people's confused looks and prevent audience members from communicating non-verbally. The result is there are a bunch of masked people wandering around a huge building or standing around watching a performance in the room. Given that a few scenes had nudity, that cinched the Eyes Wide Shut orgy reference. And when they're not running around wildly, the actors are often moving in dreadfully slow Kubrickian paces, giving you plenty of time to take note of every detail.

But the director this most made me think of was David Lynch. I felt like I was in Twin Peaks wandering around and being confused. I'm not a Twin Peaks fan as I felt the writers had no idea what they were doing. I wandered through sets and tried to figure out what was going on and what I was to experience but I'm not sure the producers had a clear goal in mind.

Unlike traditional theater this experience does use all of your senses. The forrest smelled overwhelmingly like pine. Actors push you out of the way and often you have to run to keep up with them as they travel to a different room or floor. Twice I was given drinks so I even experienced taste. But I'm still wondering to what effect.

In a room with a small bar in a corner and round table with three chairs around it and one lamp hanging down from the ceiling a woman dressed as a male bartender gestured for me to sit down and slowly dealt me three cards from a partial deck. We each slowly revealed the cards, I'm guessing I lost as she had three nines, but um yeah.... Then she picked up a bottle and gestured to ask if I wanted some. I nodded and she poured me a small shot of some licorice liqueur maybe Anisette or Sambuca. Then she firmly shook my hand and I got up and left. A half a dozen audience members watched this. I at least got a shot.

In another room a woman grabbed me and led me into a room with a desk in the corner behind a standing screen. I had seen this room before and didn't make much sense of it. The desk had various taxidermy references and tools and a bowl of eyes on it. She brought me behind the screen, now the other audience members who had followed us couldn't see this. The desk had three glasses of milk on it. She took one, poured some spice into it, mixed it up with a knife which she then licked, indicating it was safe to drink. She then took off my mask and poured it down my throat. I swallowed a few mouthfuls but that wasn't enough, she repeated so I finished the glass. Then she put my mask on and literally threw me out of the room, standing in the doorway as I looked at her and wondered what had just happened. Was I just poisoned? Embalmed? Then I went on into another room.

Experience? Yes. Theater? I wouldn't say so. Point? No idea. See what I mean about Twin Peaks?

Most of the scenes played to me as crazy people possessed. Macbeth and wife violently dancing all around the room. And I mean violently and all around the room, up the walls, on the bed, over stacks of dressers. It was alternating attraction and repulsion, two people making each other crazy. Then he left and half the audience ran after him, I stayed and watch her. She got a long gown and continued the dance around the room. He returned bloodied, apparently having killed King Duncan, and she removed his clothes and bathed him in the bathtub in the middle of the room, rubbing to get the blood of his hands.

A pregnant woman (Lady Macduff?) at home couldn't sit still and literally climbed the walls to sit on the top of a bookshelf next to a statue of the Virgin Mary. Well sit isn't right, she was dancing up there, and then got down and was back and forth to a desk to pick up what looked like a pill box only to put it back down several times. Again, all very quick birdlike motions. Then a man joined her and they repeated this. Then they stopped, went to separate rooms, got dressed up and went up to a dance.

I saw King Duncan's body wrapped and carried to another room and unwrapped. A woman, I assume his wife, caressed him and he got up! Was he not dead? A ghost now? Or just resetting a scene?

These I think expose another problem. As I read reviews now, the story is repeated three times during the three hours, so the actors have to get back to positions. But since the audience can see everything, the costume changes have to be worked into the performance. But while they do it silently and deliberately it doesn't really have any meaning. You have to recognize the scene cut as part of the language of this medium.

Macbeth does have action that happens offstage but still, I get the sense that I accidentally choose many filler scenes that didn't add to any narrative. The sets and things I saw did have some interesting Twin Peaks weirdness, but only enough to sustain about a half hour's of my interest, not three hours.

It seems an odd form of theater that you have to know the story ahead of time to know what you're seeing. I went with a friend who had been once before and enjoyed it both times and is going back for a third. He said he saw 8 new rooms and several things he hadn't seen before. He also watched Polanski's film since seeing it the first time. I'm still trying to figure out if I want to go again. It might not be clear from reading this but I think I probably do want to see it one more time. I do have some advice for those going.

1. Wear comfortable clothing and shoes, you will be running. The building is warm so check your coat and bags, you don't want to be carrying them.

2. Parts of it are very dark. When we first entered I literally couldn't see my hand in front of my face. After walking a little bit we made our way to the bar. Look for the candles on the floor and be comforted that nothing else is (quite) so dark.

3. You will be separated from your party, this is something to be experienced on your own and then you can discuss it afterwards. Spend some time listening to the Annie Darcy Jazz Band in the bar afterwards. The $11 cocktails were reasonably tasty.

4. Don't waste time wandering through empty rooms unless you really want to. Find actors and watch scenes and follow them around. I also suspect it's better to follow the men as more of the plot happens with them, though the witches have a scene reminiscent of Rosemary's Baby.

5. Move all the way into a room so others can fit in. It's already frustrating enough that actors run through narrow doors and swarms of people follow them, when they get there let them in.

6. Be well versed in Macbeth. I don't think reading a short summary is enough, watch a film or read the play.

I don't think the above is giving anything away and I don't know why the web page doesn't explain some of it. And when they hand out the masks and explain some rules like be quiet and people in black masks are crew, they could have given some hints like try following actors.

While writing this I've read several reviews (this is my favorite one) and looked through the comments on the web site. I really found them unsatisfactory. Someone complains about their experience and others chime back "if you need theater to be linear or spelled out you won't like it, try reading the play beforehand and expanding your experience". But I've yet to see anyone actually explain any part of it other than "it was amazing and I can't wait to go back". To those people I say try to use your words and if the point is to give everyone a unique experience, then be respectful of people's negative experiences, they're unique too.