Sleep No More at NY's Emursive
A Unique Theatrical Experience
By: Angelika Jansen - Nov 19, 2012
Sleep No More - 530 W 27th Street
Chelsea, New York City
Tickets: 866.811.4111
reservations@sleepnomorenyc.com
You definitely will not sleep during this fast moving chase with phantom-like apparitions stepping into your path in the funky McKittrick Hotel on 530 W 27th Street. You surrender a sense of reality as you don a white mask, stay quiet and follow – Ghosts, Witches, Nurses, Noble People and other living creatures through the dark passage ways up and down stairs into ballrooms, grave yards, saloons, bed chambers, forests, you name it. It is a pursuit of fictional characters, through time and space, loosely based on Shakespeare’s “Macbeth.” Your chase will not end for hours, if you so chose. You will continuously encounter new situations on the five floors of the McKittrick Hotel, in seemingly countless venues. It is up to you, whether you had your fill of excitement, to end the race. If you have decided to do so, go down to the bar, and encounter a different entertainment, a fine musical performance and a relaxing end of the evening with as many drinks brought to you as you can stomach. (Well, not quite. There are drunk driving laws!)
Don’t even try to find any information on the McKittrick Hotel, since it is a creation of the Punchdrunk Company, founded by Felix Barrett in 2000 in the UK. It morphed in 2010 into Emursive, formed by Jonathan Hochwald, Arthur Karpati and Randy Weiner to “create immersive experiences in extraordinary places.” Sleep No More, directed by Felix Barrett and Maxine Doyle, is their first production in New York City.
It is definitely special and, rightfully, it received in 2011 the Drama Desk Award for “Unique Theatrical Experience.” Since it is an open-ended production, there is ample time for getting tickets (high prized or check for discounts) to partake in the fun of being turned around, in trying to muddle through the experiences of being a puzzled bystander in an absurd play, or by becoming part of the game by participating a little on the dance floor. It is a cultural experience, an immersion into shreds of cultural notions, scrambled into a new form, neither theatre nor film, nor exercise, nor mystical conditioning – but everything at once – and great fun to partake.