Late Night Insanity

Joined the queue halfway down the block for the late show (11.20 p.m.) of Punchdrunk Theatre's "installation" SLEEP NO MORE inspired by MACBETH and taking place in the McKittrick Hotel on W 27th St.

 Shuffling down a long dark hallway, past the cloakroom to a check-in desk where we were given two playing cards, the 8 & 9 of Spades. Then plunged into darkness and disorienting winding corridors which fed us into a 1920s cabaret and bar with a three piece band. 

A young lady in period costume noticed we weren't buying drinks, looked at our cards and said, "Oh, you have a while yet. Do you want to go up now?" We said yes, so she led us to an anteroom and left us saying "If you have any problems...tell them Josephine sent you."

 In the small darkened room we were issued with bizarre masks

which we were told to leave on all night, ordered not to speak, use phones or take photographs and then ushered into an elevator.

 James, our dashing lift man, let bunches of us off one floor at a time.

Thus, the adventure began...

tt here.  Here is a photo of  one of the  masks they gave us.

 I was thinking about it and have often wondered why this type of Venetian face covering has the rather ugly extended lip and now having worn one the reasons are practical...you can breathe and aesthetic .... there is no way the mouth can betray what the wearer is feeling.  The bugger was  the glasses!  But  if I had taken them off I would have crashed into even more furniture, stumbled over more door frames and fallen down more steps.

Were were completely free to go wherever we liked, touch anything we liked and follow anyone we liked. The latter was easy enough to say than do. We tried it once but the stunning gentleman in the dinner suit who had just performed a most athletic pas de trois with a lovely young woman and a door was too quick for us and he disappered into a grove of trees!

  The company had just enacted the Banquo scene from Macbeth in a delicious dumb show at a long table groaning with fruit and wine.

 In slow motion they writhed and leered and pointed at each other in between gropes and tonguies

 and then at the height of the orgy melted into the darkness amongst us while a pine forest rolled in from all directions and pushed is out of the space...We were in Dunsinane well and truly and destined to be separated...which would have been terrible because in the five floored labrynth , masked and half blind, we would never have found ourselves and Sheldon had two shows the next day.

Anyway the installation was a continuing visual and aural tribute to the Scottish play with a bit of Manderlay thrown in. There were dusty, antique, taxidermy and  religious icon filled spaces

 where occasionally the players would appear and perform bizarre dances, mostly angst ridden and omnisexual.and wonderfully executed.

 An androgynous beauty mimed to Peggy Lee's "Is That All There Is" which more likely should have been re-written as "You Aint Seen Nothing Yet".  While he mouthed away a man dragged a bag of ice through and out , never to be seen again.

There was a complete herborium 

with bunches of dried plants hanging from the ceiling and arcane symbols daubed on the walls. Bottles and vials were everywhere and then of course the groat dropped....we were chez weird sisters. 

We found ourselves in a ruined cemetery under moonlight with statuary and a fountain and hundreds of tiny graves;  in Macbeth's study looking at an invitation to a harvest festival in Glams church and then in a room with a tree of empty babies..their identical moulded romper suits hanging over an abandoned cot.

We followed a pair of nurses who danced erotically along a tree lined snaking avenue til they finally entered a summer house, locked us voyeurs out and presumably started folding towels or whatever nurses do.

Overload was the ultimate result ( I have described only a quarter of what I have already forgotten) and after I found myself in a padded cell (for 10 seconds I may add) and Sheldon found himself crouching with fatigue while a psychiatrist  sinuously danced  in the window of a bath house we felt it was time (1 a.m.) to leave one lunacy and trade it for another..our home.

Getting out was not easy.  I lost Sheldon and resorted to asking a black masked minder. Acting frail helped and at last we were out into the New York morning.

I really really loved this experience and would do it again knowing it would be completely different each time. At the back of your mind is the itching question, "What didn't I see?"