Sleep No More

[oakenguy]

Wow.

Any Shakespeare play I walk out of with my ears aching a little from the techno music, a little dent on my forehead from the mask they make all the audience members wear, and my feet a little sore from all the running up and down stairs I did, is a good show.

The short version: 'Sleep No More' is a bizarre mash-up of a 'Macbeth' play, a LARP, and a haunted house designed by Stanley Kubrick, where the actors are in constant motion and the audience (in masks and silent, so it's like a busload of ghosts are following a few real people around) can either trail one, investigate the rooms, or have a nervous breakdown and go drink in the bar. Everyone in the Boston area who hasn't seen it should, and you should take me with you so I can see all the bits I didn't have TIME to see tonight.

The long version will have to wait until tomorrow, for I'm SO totally worn out. Watching Scottish witches drink half a bottle of bourbon and then take piggyback rides on the Devil is just exhausting.

Comments

[ayelle.livejournal.com]

I am sorry. My only purpose in posting the comments was to get the information out to those who may be slightly disabled or otherwise not good candidates for seeing this show, who were being swayed against their first instincts by the universally positive reviews -- people like ourselves. It was *not* to discourage anyone who thinks it sounds great and really wants to see it and isn't concerned about the rest of it. We heard nothing but glowing reviews ourselves and went in expecting to be blown away. The information that it would be physically painful, for me almost migraine-triggering, to wear the large, rigid plastic masks over our glasses -- and that any attempt to deal with this would result in a stagehand coming over to tell us we were wearing the masks incorrectly -- would have been helpful. And if I had two fully-functioning feet (I wore my most comfortable shoes of course), we might have been able to stay longer and gotten more out of it -- but no-one told us that it's hard or impossible to know when or where important scenes are happening in the four stories of rooms, and that we should be prepared not just to walk/stand, but to run, up and down stairs, for hours... and also, if we really wanted to see enough to make it all worth our while, to be prepared to pay the money to come back a second time, as every person I know who enjoyed the performance plans to do, but which we can't afford. :( Anyway, I won't post discouraging things again on your promised longer review... if you describe important scenes that we didn't get to see, I'll be very interested to read about them.