"Sleep No More": The Memory of Sinful Loss; The Terrible Presence of Absence
"He asked me if in fact I had not found some of the movements of the puppets (especially the smaller ones) very graceful during their dance. This conclusion I could not deny."
---Heinrich von Kleist, "On the Marionette Theater" (1810; Lobster & Canary trans.)
On Wednesday evening, we saw Sleep No More, the sold-out hit play by the U.K. troupe Punchdrunk (it opened in March this year--its initial six-week run has been extended into June). This is only the second appearance in the U.S.A. by Punchdrunk; they presented a smaller version of Sleep No More in 2009 in Boston.
Click here and here for more information.
Sleep No More is an adaptation of MacBeth. True enough, but that is like saying the Empire State Building is an adaptation of Cleopatra's Needle. Sleep No More is a brilliant, interstitial phantasmagoria, an explicit homage to Hitchcock (including use of Bernard Herrman's scores), a chimera combining elements of the haunted house on the midway, the Theater of Cruelty, a designer showroom, an experimental sound concert (think DJ Spooky or John Zorn), film noir, a passion play, a pantomime, an art installation (by Anselm Kiefer, for instance, or Leonardo Drew), an interactive video game (Silent Hill comes to mind), a graphic novel drawn by Moebius, cabaret, a museum of the damned, a cabinet of curiosities.
The set is an entire building in NYC's Chelsea district, six floors with c. 90 rooms, each room meticulously and elaborately dressed, encrusted with details that are clues to the mystery of Macbeth. The audience-- each member donning a white, beaked mask as if on the Rialto, and sworn to silence-- participates in the unfolding event, with the actors embracing Grotowski's direct-engagement principles. Sleep No More is utterly immersive, in essence a massive LARP (live-action role-playing game) where the script is plastic and no one knows for certain what comes next.
We chose to wander at will through the rooms, creating multiple narratives from the mass of things presented, periodically pierced by the arc of Macbeth (the sudden eruption of a fight in front of our faces, wails and cries in the distance, a tailor or a detective sitting focused on their inscrutable work, the banquet scene viewed from the railing of an amphitheater). Here is what we experienced:
Daniel A. Rabuzzi is author of the fantasy novel "The Choir Boats," available from ChiZine Publications in September 2009.
"The Choir Boats" explores issues of race, gender, sin, and salvation, and includes a mysterious letter, knuckledogs, carkodrillos, smilax root,
goat stew, and one very fierce golden cat.
(www.danielarabuzzi.com). Daniel blogs at Lobster & Canary about speculative fiction, poetry, history and the arts.
---Heinrich von Kleist, "On the Marionette Theater" (1810; Lobster & Canary trans.)
On Wednesday evening, we saw Sleep No More, the sold-out hit play by the U.K. troupe Punchdrunk (it opened in March this year--its initial six-week run has been extended into June). This is only the second appearance in the U.S.A. by Punchdrunk; they presented a smaller version of Sleep No More in 2009 in Boston.
Click here and here for more information.
Sleep No More is an adaptation of MacBeth. True enough, but that is like saying the Empire State Building is an adaptation of Cleopatra's Needle. Sleep No More is a brilliant, interstitial phantasmagoria, an explicit homage to Hitchcock (including use of Bernard Herrman's scores), a chimera combining elements of the haunted house on the midway, the Theater of Cruelty, a designer showroom, an experimental sound concert (think DJ Spooky or John Zorn), film noir, a passion play, a pantomime, an art installation (by Anselm Kiefer, for instance, or Leonardo Drew), an interactive video game (Silent Hill comes to mind), a graphic novel drawn by Moebius, cabaret, a museum of the damned, a cabinet of curiosities.
The set is an entire building in NYC's Chelsea district, six floors with c. 90 rooms, each room meticulously and elaborately dressed, encrusted with details that are clues to the mystery of Macbeth. The audience-- each member donning a white, beaked mask as if on the Rialto, and sworn to silence-- participates in the unfolding event, with the actors embracing Grotowski's direct-engagement principles. Sleep No More is utterly immersive, in essence a massive LARP (live-action role-playing game) where the script is plastic and no one knows for certain what comes next.
We chose to wander at will through the rooms, creating multiple narratives from the mass of things presented, periodically pierced by the arc of Macbeth (the sudden eruption of a fight in front of our faces, wails and cries in the distance, a tailor or a detective sitting focused on their inscrutable work, the banquet scene viewed from the railing of an amphitheater). Here is what we experienced:
Daniel A. Rabuzzi is author of the fantasy novel "The Choir Boats," available from ChiZine Publications in September 2009."The Choir Boats" explores issues of race, gender, sin, and salvation, and includes a mysterious letter, knuckledogs, carkodrillos, smilax root,
goat stew, and one very fierce golden cat.
(www.danielarabuzzi.com). Daniel blogs at Lobster & Canary about speculative fiction, poetry, history and the arts.
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