This live theater event has created quite a stir, here in NYC. Last night, I had the opportunity to taste the madness. Sadly, I found the experience underwhelming. The only fear I felt while walking through the haunted-house-like-hotel was that this spectacle could be the “future” of theater, as some of my friends in the NYC theater community have mused. The performance, which claims to be telling some version of the story of MacBeth, more convincingly delivers a variety of striptease dance routines in a nightclub meets taxidermy shop maze of rooms.
While the art direction is top notch and I commend the architects of the experience, I do not see Sleep No More as art, but as a form of entertainment. It shallowly exploits the same sexual compulsions and competitive properties of human character that more refined art often aspires to comment on or explore. That said, it does a fine job in this pursuit of human lust and competition. I hope that future theater producers of similar experiential theater will further experiment with this style of telling a story, allowing an audience to follow characters through a space designed as a choose your own adventure set. My only hope is that these future productions concern themselves more with story telling and character development and less with nudity and blood.
