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te-pu-si-ti · 11 months ago

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A Trojan Shade visits the McKittrick Hotel: Day One

I saw Sleep No More once, four years ago. I'd say that it changed my life, in the way that anything beautiful and innovative that shows you a new way to experience art is 'life-changing'. But I didn't know how much it truly would change my life: introducing me to Punchdrunk, who would open a show in London a few years later. Which would become the best part of my life, for eighteen months.

Now, on my way to family Christmas, I was able to stop in New York for five shows of Sleep No More before it all goes away.

My first day was a double. Two shows, only three full character loops really, but so much to take in.

I did not do research before this show. I wanted to go in relatively blind, which is to say "not really blind at all" because I have been reading about SNM for the past two years. But I tried to stay fairly un-spoiled, because that sense of exploration and bewilderment was important to me, for this first show. I gave myself permission to look up everything I wanted afterwards.

I did one bit of "homework" - I watched Rebecca on the plane. It is a fantastic film. So I was interested in finding those connections, if I could.

Sunday Matinee

In the rules before the lift, they outright mentioned that today was a sold-out show (as they all are from here on out). I had booked these shows before the closure announcement, hoping that the matinee shows would be fairly empty... but fate had other plans.

First lift, I had no idea where I was going, but luckily everybody else did, so I followed them down to the ballroom. I didn't see this scene on my first visit! Nor the rave. Nor the banquet, until the finale. I struggle to remember much of anything that I saw during my first show - just vague flashes of a forgotten dream.

I just stood there, huge smile on my face, watching the dancers up close, the enchanting music (which stayed in my head all week), the lovely costumes, all of it. A witch winked at me as she spun past. I can't believe I'm really back.

There was one character in the ballroom who piqued my interest - staying on the sidelines, stern-faced, looking rather familiar. It must be Mrs Danvers.

Despite the full show, I had Danvers to myself for the majority of her loop. I couldn't have been more pleased, following her around like a little puppy, just me and her - something I hadn't experienced in the final months of TBC. No character was ever alone at a sold-out TBC show.

Is she the most flashy loop? Well, no. But I found her a perfect introduction to this visit, a fairly easy follow, and a character I definitely wanted to tick off my list.

She's so my type. Like Oracle, like Luba, a utility character, tidying up and setting up. She felt familiar. She felt comfortable, even though I didn't yet know her.

Covering up the clocks, dozens of them all over the walls, their ticking sound deafening. Time is marching on.

A beautiful push-and-pull between her and the Porter, on the sofa of the hotel, Lady MacDuff caught in the middle.

She waves her hand over the milk, as if enchanting it. It could just as easily be a mundane drug or poison, but she gives it something of the arcane.

As she mixes it, I get a jolt of memory - I have been here before. I have watched her mix the milk, and I have followed her down the stairs with the stained-glass window, the colours so vibrant where everything else is so sepia-toned, to the dead man.

He wakes up, she puts him to bed, and she's sticking her hand down her skirt - I blink in surprise, I wait for a more innocent explanation to arise, but no, she is doing what I think she's doing, until the man wakes up and she returns to attention.

A beautiful, beautiful sequence with Lady MacD and the milk again, jumping from table to table, this show makes such beautiful use of the mundane elements of the set as spaces to dance over. A table top, a cabinet, a recess in the wall, it's all fair game, and it's thrilling because I truly don't know where they're going to go next. I don't know where the 'safe' areas of these rooms are, which adds a little bit of stress, but keeps me on my toes.

Speaking of 'safe areas'... I continued following Danvers on the mezzanine, when a BM stopped me without warning, and motioned me to step back, onto a raised platform. I was a little confused, until I saw the door being taken off its hinges.

The DOOR. DANCE. HOLY. CRAP. SLEEP NO MORE IS AMAZING HOLY SHIT

I could not believe my eyes.

My second and third loops were less focused, including:

Following Agnes for a bit, until getting a door shut in my face

Finally seeing the rave, from a great spot right by Hecate, so I could look over at her orchestrating it all menacingly - I kept thinking WHY IS NO ONE ELSE LOOKING AT HER, obviously the answer is "the goat and the baby and the blood and the tits" but she was fabulous and no one was paying attention

It's Agnes again, with Hecate this time! Golden light reflection from the lipstick case into her eye. Catching her tears - just so familiar.

A giant hand made of salt????

The Taxidermist is a wonderful weirdo, brushing a fox's fur and then absentmindedly brushing their own hair with the same brush

Fulton in the graveyard with the umbrella, a scene I somehow ran into in four out of my five shows

Post-mortem photography in the album in the funeral home. I wonder how the deceased & family would feel about this: Does it grant them a little extra bit of the immortality that they wanted?

Eventually I wound up in the speakeasy, watching a card game turn violent. Once again, we're ushered up onto a White Mask Holding Area to keep us out of the way. I have mixed feelings about this - when BMs herd us around like this, it breaks the immersion quite a lot. But it also allows for choreo that might otherwise not be possible.

I stayed with whoever got killed (who I now know to be Banquo, but I hadn't a clue at the time) and followed him out onto the high street.

He looks around, then looks at us - then looks at me in particular, notices the blood on his hands and face, and I watch his dawning realisation of what has happened to him. It's masterful.

Noah's Banquo is the last character of my first show, and he will be the first character of my last show. There are a few portrayals that left a lasting impression on me, and this is one of them. I just can't say enough good things.

Sunday Evening

After the afternoon's Danvers loop, I had my eye on Lady MacDuff this show, to see the rest of her story. We climbed the stairs down to the ballroom, arriving before the dance had even started, and I soon noticed that this evening's Lady MacD was the same performer as this afternoon's Danvers (Matilda)!

I put aside a twinge of embarrassment, hoping that she'll take it as a compliment, and I ended up liking her as Lady MacD even better than as Danvers. I think this is a wonderful casting doublet, seeing the same person do both sides of their dances.

I watch a solo on a small bed, there's only a few of us watching and the room is roomy enough, so I scoot in against the wall. The wall is mirrored, so I look behind to make sure I'm not blocking the view - and I realise that the mirror is false. It reflects a room much like the one we're in, but the toy blocks are toppled on the floor, and a blood stain is spreading across the sheets. It's a fun and chilling bit of stage sorcery that I didn't expect at all, and I love it.

She toddles up onto a tall cabinet, unsure footing as she climbs up to a tiny shrine dug out of the wall. I love the way dancers can portray shakiness, awkwardness, clumsiness, while remaining perfectly in control. I worry for her, this pregnant woman so close to losing her footing.

I watch her scenes with Danvers and I love to see the roles reversed. She is wonderful as both, though with her youth, I find her more believable as LMD, and she has a sweet vulnerability. She seems to me a first-time mother.

She packs away baby clothes, and she holds a white dress up against herself, and dances with it. I'm reminded of a scene that Luba used to do sometimes, a dance in the Danaides room with one of the dresses. It seemed, to me, to represent a longed-for femininity, wishing for glamour in an unglamourous life, and here I think maybe she's longing for the life she had before she fell pregnant, feeling an ambivalence to this huge life change - joyful, but a sacrifice too.

She rocks a swaddling blanket like the child she hopes to bring into the world. I'm sure this won't end happily for her, and I'm even more sure when she starts looking into the mirror, and she sees me - our eyes meet and she has this terror on her face, and it takes my breath away.

(I stayed with her for an entire loop, through reset to the second ballroom, and for whatever reason, there was no 1:1 -- but to have a character look at me through a mirror again, that bit of Punchdrunk magic, was worth so much more to me. I don't know how they do what they do, but it means everything.)

Macbeth comes, and she is killed, and later she resurrects - the world turns a ghostly blue, a shade of blue that I associate with the record stop of TBC, a mystical colour, and a very jarring colour in this show. It's perfect.

We reset, she spends some time with her husband, goes back to her little shrine, and soon we reach another ballroom.

The rest of my loop 2 is full of false starts - I try to follow a character, only to see them start running up several flights of stairs, and decide it isn't worth it. I explore Floor 5, reading case files, including Jack Favell from Rebecca.

I see collections of nails, and collections of feathers, and collections of cut-out pages. I go down the lobby and I see a collection of tear vials. All these signals that we have been here before, and we will be here again and again and again.

Eventually I find the Porter in the hotel, and I have been assured that he stays there, so he's exactly who I need for my aching feet. I'm flagging at this point. A double in TBC was hard enough, and I would always fit in a bar loop on those occasions. This is a show that I don't know - I get lost, I run after characters because I don't know where they're going, I can't take shortcuts and I can't take my time. I've been running around for 6 hours.

So I stay in the hotel lobby. I even try to sit on the chairs, though I don't know which chairs might unexpectedly get danced on, so I don't linger.

The Porter is wonderful. I am so charmed by his dance to the ballroom music, and I get hit with another deja vu - I have seen this before, I have watched him prance along the bar, and I was alone there, just me and him. I remember that from 2019, a beautiful moment.

This time, he spends some time balancing a teacup on his head, and then running around with his jacket held behind him like a cape, like a little boy playing superhero. He wins me over immediately.

I get to see Boy Witch's 'Is That All There Is?' and Porter moping in a corner about it.

He takes someone in for a 1:1, and I wait outside at the Lost Property desk, but I'm not waiting alone. There's... another Porter there.

Oh, I've heard about this! They have a celebrity guest in residence, Milo Manheim. It's an iconic 'Sleep No More' move, if you ask me - I had heard about the guest stars long before I knew much of anything about the show. One of those weird little facts that gets passed around like urban legend - Sometimes, they'll randomly have celebrities playing roles there! They don't advertise it, you'll just go and run into, like, Neil Patrick Harris or Evan Rachel Wood or someone.

I like the mini-porter, though. He gives me something to watch while Porter is away. He's on one side of the Lost Property counter, and the cluster of WMs is watching politely from the other side. He takes a piece of paper, folds it in half, and draws a simple outline of a man - sort of a Gingerbread Man type silhouette, but with a long neck.

He tears out the little paper guy, slowly, deliberately, in that very Punchdrunk way where someone is doing something that sounds very boring when you just write it down, but is actually very compelling with the intensity that he puts into it.

He moves to the back of the Lost Property area, leaning against a locker, glancing around, and as he does he twists the neck of the little paper man, turning him around and around and around and I think to myself that must be painful, even though this is just a little paper doll we're talking about. Then, real Porter comes out, and mini-Porter goes in, taking somebody with him.

I see the rest of the loop through with the real Porter, catching a few scenes that I've seen already, but I don't mind that.

He takes Danvers' arm, and they walk together down to the finale. My first day, finished. I have seen so much! I have so much yet to see! What a show.

First Day Closing Thoughts

It was so, so beautiful to be in a world like this again. To uncover a new story in a familiar format. To be taken by surprise. To welcome this show in like an old friend.

However: I cannot overstate how physically taxing I found this show. Like, it's not accessible to certain people. I don't consider myself disabled or anything - I'm just in my thirties, have back and joint pain, and am not athletic. But I still felt that this show was not made for me. TBC was spread over only two levels and people joked that this was a concession for an aging fanbase, but now I think it's not such a joke actually! Those stairs are killer.

There are some characters who only stay on a single floor, and there are some characters who do a few flights of stairs but not many, or not quickly. And if I had that extra familiarity with this show, or had been willing to do more research beforehand, I could have found that out. Instead, I fucked up my back and my feet over the course of my double, so this is my caution to you: Pace yourself!

But, I mean, my discomfort was temporary and my trip was a one-time opportunity. My sore feet will heal, and fitting 5 shows into 3 days was a necessary evil since I was travelling from far away.

This show is dark. I get that dim lights are part of the format - but I found the lights much darker than TBC. The dim glow of dusty old bulbs reigns throughout, while TBC has areas of neon and more theatrical lighting which can be brighter without upsetting the mood. I struggled to appreciate the set and even the performers' faces, because of the lack of light.

These are just nitpicks and minor gripes though - overall, it was breathtaking. Overall, there is nothing like coming back into a Punchdrunk world. Overall, my main takeaway is there is so much more here. I can't wait to take in more.

Next up: Day Two (featuring a 1:1, and a Weirdo who I instantly fell in love with) and Day Three (One More Double, and my absolute favourite loop)

#sleep no more #punchdrunk #sleep no more nyc #sleepnomorenyc #the mckittrick hotel #snm oc #immersive theatre

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