![]() It’s tough to tell if the restaurant and roof bar are another way to cash in or just a means to keep the doors open. No one is particularly forthcoming about either the operating costs of the show, its profits, or the terms of the contract with Punchdrunk. And if anyone is, is that so terrible? Or is there a danger that a profit motive will dilute the work itself, a question Lyn Gardner asked almost a decade ago? It had an initial capitalisation of between $5m and $10m and operating costs that one of its American producers characterized as “a massive undertaking”. That said, it’s not entirely clear just how much anyone is profiting from Sleep No More. Where’s the line between experimental and entrepreneurial? We expect a merch table at a Broadway show – Aladdin has a whole bazaar – but there’s something less comfortable about a purportedly avant-garde work that looks to be cashing in, as Sleep no More does with its tie-in bars, its $20 souvenir programs aggressively flogged to departing guests. ![]() Photograph: Stephen Dobbie and Lindsay Nolin/Suppliedīut Sleep No More is also a case study of the relationship – sometimes cozy, sometimes uneasy – between art and commerce. The piece continues to be markedly influential, sharpening New York’s interest in site-specific work and experiential events, a mild irony as the 1960s happenings that New York created seem a clear inspiration to Punchdrunk.Īn image from the 2009 launch performances. There are websites and blogs devoted to the show (and its ample nudity), as well as tributes on TV shows like Law & Order and Gossip Girl. The reviews – from critics and ordinary punters – are mostly ecstatic, and while the show’s American producers say, perhaps disingenuously, that they prepared for a run of only six weeks, Sleep No More doesn’t look like it’s closing any time soon. At each of the nine weekly performances, several hundred spectators (both Punchdrunk and the American producers, emursive, are oddly shy about giving precise numbers), who have paid between $75 and $170, not including cocktails, race around 100,000 square feet of space watching a wordless version of Macbeth as art-directed by Alfred Hitchcock. The actors dance more than dialogue, making a welcoming space as long as you’re cool with dim lighting and sexy movement.Since it opened in New York in 2011, Punchdrunk’s Sleep No More, which shares premises with the Lodge and the Heath in a space known as the McKittrick Hotel, has become a theatrical sensation. Wisely more physical than verbal, the show, created by the British theatre company Punchdrunk, welcomes a more diverse range of audiences if Shakespearean verse deters you, fret not here. So what happens at Sleep No More ? It depends on the journey you take and the characters you follow. It’s a theatrical playground whose throughline loosely (very loosely) mimics that of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, a quote from which inspires the title of this New York mainstay’s work. In fact, the dutiful staff ensures your phone is kept under lock and key before you enter the performance space, an attention to detail I wish was similarly enforced at most Broadway shows.Īnd speaking of performance space: after being holed up at home for the past two years, the sprawling, multi-floor setting of the McKittrick Hotel, the 27th Street setting of Sleep No More, feels like an airy adult jungle gym. Leave your iPhone and Waze app at home: Sleep No More has no guide or roadmap, which is a major part of its appeal.
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