Sleep No More

[rm]

Patty and I saw Sleep No More last night, which was fantastic, and has been extended through May 7, so you should go see it if you're in the area.

We were strongly cautioned to know as little as possible about it going into it and were ultimately fine with that, although we feel that the fear of spoilers was perhaps excessive.

I will write a real review on LfT, about how all interactive/imersive theater like this ultimately become a narrative about celebrity, even if that isn't the main narrative, but I wanted to post some "shit you should know" under the spoilers area -- this is like triggers and environmental concerns and stuff.



- If you have any degree of night blindness go with a friend and DO NOT SEPARATE even if you are encouraged to do so.

- Patty encountered a moment with a strobe light that really bothered her and strobes don't normally bother her. I note it because most performances warn about this and this didn't. I didn't encounter the strobe.

- Actors will touch you if you get too close or are in their way. Sometimes they will seek you out. The odds of this happening to you are low, but if you don't deal well with strangers touching you, hang back.

- I found the show erotic, and it's certainly very adult. There's a lot of nudity.

- I have a particular, hard to explain horror of medical stuff. Forced medical stuff, medicine used as punishment being particular things for me. THERE'S AN ENTIRE FLOOR OF THE EXPERIENCE THAT IS LIKE THAT. It was a bit challenging. It's not gory, but it totally messed my stuff up.

- There's a lot of blood. You may stumble on a murder scene OUT OF SYNC WITH THE ACTORS. Which meant I found the crime scene before actors did and accidentally STUCK MY HAND IN A BOWL OF "BLOOD". This may be less traumatizing to someone who hasn't played the Lady in this play, but it FREAKED MY SHIT OUT.

- I imagine someone somewhere is freaked out by people expressing non-verbal anguish or talking in made-up languages. There's not a lot of this, but I found it unsettling enough when I encountered it that I thought you should know.

- Other audience members will start doing shit that fucks with you -- like hiding in coffins and bathtubs and shit. So just, you've been warned.

- It is, hwoever, easy to tell audience from actor because of masks everyone in the audience has to wear. They do fit comfortably over glasses, but Patty said she felt hers was hard to breath in and I felt mine gave me a headache.

- Much of the set is made of old books/photographs/paper and there's a TON of artificial smoke and scent used to convey various locations. Probably not a viable show for the chemically sensitive or some asthmatics.

Now you know.



BUt the show was HOT and I will write about it when I get the chance.

Comments

[rusty_halo.livejournal.com]

Were you at the 11pm-2am show last night? If so, I was there too. It was... interesting. I'm kind of amazed no one has fallen and broken a limb in the rush to chase an actor up and down crowded flights of stairs in the dark, and I had a terrible time breathing in the mask, but some moments were really incredible.

(I think my favorite was the man miming along to "Is That All Their Is" while breaking down and then having his tears wiped away by a hotel porter. Well, and all the homoeroticism with the pretty men. But then it was a little much being trapped in a tiny room with a gorgeous naked man silently directing audience members to dress him... And since you missed the strobe I'm guessing you didn't see the fetus baptism/naked guy with a goat's head/orgy/ritual scene? After a while I thought the nudity and violence got a bit one-note. If I went again, I'd take a break in the middle to spend some time relaxing in the bar and having a drink.)

Anyway. Looking forward to your review!

[rm.livejournal.com]

Missed the dressing thing!

Did wind up pretty much dancing with the three witches (whom I loved) because I figured out how to get behind the hotel desk at the right/wrong time and kept being in the way and had to be swept out of the way repeatedly.

I was there for the thing with the porter too, and it was also my favorite moment. Very Twin Peaks.

[kdsorceress.livejournal.com]

sdhghvcjpao;g, _IS THAT ALL THERE IS_. That song! I saw the show in Boston at the very end of 2009, and that song just attacked my brain and went omnomnom and I bought it immediately and listened to it like forty times in a row!

(I also somehow cycled such to hear it twice, since at least at the Boston cast, they ran through the whole show twice.)

~Sor

[rose71.livejournal.com]

I've heard great things about the show (both the original Boston production and the NYC one), and I'll look forward to your review!

For your warnings, it could be worth adding something about the amount of walking, standing, and stair-climbing involved. I was eager to see the show, but I have limited mobility, so (after hearing and reading about the show's layout), I felt that it would be too much of a challenge. Very sad, because the interactive & active participation sounds fascinating!

[melebeth]

You might actually call the show and talk to them if you want to attend. We were told in steward training that are committed to helping people with limited mobility see the show - particularly those in wheelchairs, although I suspect they can adapt those accommodations (which include having someone assigned to help you around and use of the elevators) to others.

[rose71.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the tip! It's great to hear that the theater is so committed to helping people see the show (I'm not in wheelchair myself, but have other limitations). Sadly, I think I've missed my chance, since I'm now back in Boston and not revisiting NY in the next few weeks. But in the future I hope to be more enterprising about calling and asking show venues about mobility.

[melebeth]

Keep an eye out on the schedule if you do return to NY. I would not be surprised if it got extended further.

[iterum.livejournal.com]

The ticket staff told us Saturday night that they had just that day or the day before been extended into June, so perhaps that will become official soon if it hasn't already.

[marzipan-pig.livejournal.com]

Hah I think almost every single one of these warnings would be a problem for me, which is sort of cute, like, design a show that would be almost impossible for me to enjoy! I can maybe read descriptions of it and get something out of it that way :)

[melebeth]

The "don't learn a lot" from me was less about spoilers than expectations. People who have gone into the show with an idea of what it is going to be have often been... disappointed is the wrong word. I'm not sure what the right word is. But there is something delightful about being naive to the structure of the event.

[mangosteen]

At a guess, "learning a lot" beforehand creates expectations. Having just seen it a week ago, part of the appeal is having no expectations at all. Were I to go into it knowing about "thing x happens at y time" or somesuch, I'd probably have been a lot more goal-oriented, and been disappointed if I missed the specific goals I'd been told about.

As it stood, I didn't spend much time following the actors at all because that's not what the show *was* to me, although it was certainly part of it. A great deal of it was just exploring the space, understanding what parts of it were passively dynamic ("That wasn't lit up before") and actively dynamic ("That just moved, didn't it."), and delving into the sheer amount of detail in each of the sets.

An alternate possibility re: expectations is the "Come on! Let me have it!" factor. "Sleep No More" encouraged being active (following, moving, etc.). It's possible that expectations of spectacle would encourage a passive approach to the space, resulting in disappointment.

[aynatonal.livejournal.com]

Oh, man. This show looks *so* exciting. Exactly the kind of theater I love--immersive, ritualistic, transporting. Augh, my inability to hop on a plane and come see this is making me seriously question my lifestyle choices.

[adelheid-p.livejournal.com]

I think I'd prefer to watch the audience interacting in the production with the actors but not be a personal participant myself. I think your warnings are valid and not spoilers. If I were to go, I would want to know about being touched by actors, and that it's not your conventional sit and be entertained kind of piece and the mobility involved to participate. It sounds neat and daunting to me all at the same time.

[shadesong.livejournal.com]

Thank you for the heads-up! Had the show been affordable, I might've gone to it - but I have terrible night vision, and while strobes don't provoke seizures in me, they do make me extremely sick to my stomach. Also people touching me when I'm very nauseated and can't see would make me twitchy. Also the medical stuff. So clearly this is not the show for me!

Considering that strobes do cause seizures in many epileptics, I'm surprised and disappointed that they don't make their use of them common knowledge.

[iterum.livejournal.com]

I was at the 7:40 show last night! I like the set stuff they did, compared to the already excellent set-up when I saw the show in Boston.

Missed the orgy ritual and the dress-me-up scene; maybe they only do that in the late show (but there was plenty of nakedry).

It's like the world's best haunted house, but with Shakespeare and Hitchcock and dangling genitalia.

[kdsorceress.livejournal.com]

Man, you got a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT version of it than I did! Like, I do not recall anything that could be defined as medical horror, and I don't _think_ I ran into the murder scene (though I may've?) and I remain bummed that I've only gotten to see this once and not the thirty or so times it requires.

Did they have the indoor pine forest somewhere? I was finding needles from that in my coat pocket for most of a year afterwards.

I wound up getting a very high level of audience interaction, mostly because I was absolutely in thrall to Hecate. She dragged me backstage as part of a stealing an audience member, removed my mask, and told me a story --disconcerting to hear words when everything else had been in silence. It happened again, I was standing in just the right spot the next time through, and when she removed my mask she recognized me, and stole some of my hair which at the time was entirely appropriate and I was fine with because _holy shit_ was I hers¹, but thinking about it after, that's the kind of thing I really don't like people doing.

And yeah. Super super jealous. Wish like hell I could afford tickets down to NYC and to this, both re: money and time. _super_ jealous.

(I will probably write more on this later, but I have to accomplish things today)

~Sor

1: I'm not entirely sure I've had anything come close to the level of pure blind devotion I was feeling towards her. It was...singularly frightening, but at the same time, a little appealing. I'm sure I could've forced myself to break the spell had I really wanted/needed, but there was a neatness there.

[rm.livejournal.com]

I saw a guy steal an audience member into a phone booth, take off her mask and tell her a story. She was terrified and crying.

The whole floor with the insane asylum punched all my medical horror buttons BADLY and it was the first thing I saw. Also that padded room with the Star of David made out of feathers on the wall -- that felt truly haunted (and I know that feeling) and not only could I not get out of there fast enough, I found myself trying to stop another person from going in. It felt so wrong.

CONTAINS SPOILERS

[iterum.livejournal.com]

There was a forest, although it didn't do the surprising but source-accurate thing I saw it do in Boston.

I saw a few customers being dragged off by actors; one was pulled into a sort of shack that was then locked, but there were (very likely intentional) small gaps between boards here and there if you felt like trying to spy.

A lot of the medical set-up seemed similar to Boston, actually, but the insane asylum's bathtubs lacked the live eel this time. (This comment is only going to solidify gement's suspicions.)

Bonus: We got to keep our masks! A nice perk since the show charged than double the Boston price (including on the cocktails).

[gement.livejournal.com]

Oh man. The more people describe variations of the experience, the more it sounds like you're playing a Satanic game of Mornington Crescent or Calvinball on those of us who haven't seen it. :)

[kdsorceress.livejournal.com]

NTS: This. Do this. Get a handful of really strange and excellent people, and totally do this. And then take the collaborative theatre world they've invented and make it real, because why do this half-assed.

~Sor