At The McKittrick Hotel is actually three adjoining warehouses in Chelsea's gallery district
at 530, West 27th Street. It is an immersive theatre installation created by British theatre company Punchdrunk based on their original 2003 London production and their 2009 collaboration with Boston's American Repertory Theatre. The company reinvented Sleep No More in a co-production with Emursive, and began performances on March 7, 2011. The production is set in a block of warehouses in Manhattan, which the company transformed into an abandoned hotel called The McKittrick Hotel. Sleep No More won the 2011 Drama Desk Award for Unique Theatrical Experience and won Punchdrunk special citations at the 2011 Obie Awards for design and choreography.
Sleep No More tells the story of Macbeth through a film noir lens. If you can walk through dark corridors and step quickly up stairwells at a pace that follows the action and the actors of what appears more like performance art and contemporary dance, it’s a story that unfolds and you are part of the masquerade. The darkness and quiet hush brings a heightened eeriness, leading its audience on a merry, macabre chase, through a labrinith of rooms that are set to fashion Shakespeare. The masked audience moves freely at their own pace, choosing where to play hide and seek, and everyone’s journey is unique. The actors can be found in bedrooms, bathrooms, ballrooms, hospital rooms and nurseries dressing and undressing, dancing to the foxtrot, making love, killing one another while washing their bodies, and hands of blood. (The Macbeth mansion has many bathtubs as well as, oil painting, fans, closets, bookcases.) Choreographed by Ms. Doyle, these activities are executed with tense balletic virtuosity by neurotic, anguished and gymnastic creative artists’, who climb the walls (literally) during moments of intensity within their character. The mood-matching sound design includes recordings (“Goodnight Children, Everywhere,” “A Nightingale Sang in
Berkeley Square”), techno music (but only for the witches) and swoony, suspenseful Bernard Herrmann scores for Hitchcock movies.
The interior detail of every room - set decoration encompasses every thought of how a mansion should be when found after many years of being locked away with twilight-crepuscular, smog, and the odor of death, life, and they mystery of who you will find upon opening a door, closet, casket; it’s like Pandora’s Box giving way to curiosity you must know who or what adventure is waiting on the other side. But beware as the audience is masked and you never know who will bring you to sigh, or fear the cast or the person standing, sitting, running toward you in a white mask with a pointed extended jaw. Berkeley Square”), techno music (but only for the witches) and swoony, suspenseful Bernard Herrmann scores for Hitchcock movies.
Many of the roles are double cast; meaning an actor may play one role one night and be expected to play another on a different night.
By Emursive; directed by Felix Barrett and Maxine Doyle; design by Mr. Barrett, Livi Vaughan and Beatrice Minns; choreography by Ms. Doyle; sound by Stephen Dobbie; lighting by Mr. Barrett and Euan Maybank; costumes by David Israel Reynoso; production manager, Bradley Thompson. A Punchdrunk production, presented by Emursive, Randy Weiner, Arthur Karpati and Jonathan Hochwald, principals, in association with Rebecca Gold Productions and Douglas G. Smith, with Centaur Properties, Dave Kavanagh CWL, Tim Levy, Michael O’Malley, Kostas Panagopoulos, Madstone Productions LLC, Marco Olmi, Rachael Stone Olmi, Daryl Roth Productions, Dr. Philip and Gail Stone and True Love Productions LLC. At the McKittrick Hotel,
WITH: Phil Atkins (Duncan), Kelly Bartnik (Catherine Campbell), Sophie Bortolussi (Lady Macbeth), Nicholas Bruder (Macbeth), Ching-I Chang (Sexy Witch), Hope T. Davis (Bald Witch),John Sorensen-Jolink (Macduff), Stephanie Eaton (Nurse Shaw), Gabriel Forestieri (J. Fulton), Jeffery Lyon (Banquo), Careena Melia (Hecate), Jordan Morley (Boy Witch), Matthew Oaks (Porter), Rob Najarian (Malcolm), Alli Ross (Lady Macduff), Paul Singh (Speakeasy Barman), Tori Sparks (Agnes Naismith) and Lucy York (Matron).
