He feels guilt for his terrible crimes and is overwhelmed with self-doubt.Īt the start of his loop, Macbeth leaves the ballroom and climbs the stairs to the mezzanine. The character is faithful to Shakespeare’s original – murderous and paranoid, but not a typical villain. The ‘Court’ characters are typically dressed in elegant evening wear, and like most of the male actors, Macbeth wears a tuxedo. The characters of ‘Sleep No More’ are listed in the programme notes in separate categories – ‘Court’, ‘Supernatural’ and ‘Townspeople’.
Finally, the last guests are sent on their way, as he hums a few bars of Cole Porter’s ‘Let’s Misbehave’. The elevator drops to another floor, and a few more people are let out. He encourages everyone with a few tips, ‘Behave like an adult, but explore like a child.’ He tells them that the lift is going up a few floors, and that ‘Fortune favours the brave’.Īt the top floor, he ushers one guest out and prevents anyone else from leaving. Guests are then greeted by James, the elevator attendant, and shepherded into a freight lift. The woman from the bar enters and explains that if it all gets too much, they can always find her in the Manderley, ‘I like the company’. They’re each handed a mask and instructed, ‘No more voices’. Manderley BarĮach time he calls out a card number, groups of about twenty guests follow him to a small side room. He returns shortly afterwards and simply announces ‘deuces’. In a slow monotone drawl he tells anyone holding an ace to drink up and follow him. During the show, this is the one location where guests are allowed to relax without wearing a mask.Ī man in a tuxedo and bow tie steps onto the stage and approaches a ‘Shure 55’ style microphone. A woman dressed in a long, red ballgown welcomes people as they enter. There’s a cabaret stage dressed in opulent red velvet and a small ornate bar serving cocktails. The name is a reference to a fictional estate in Daphne du Maurier’s ‘Rebecca’. Out of the maze, audience members emerge into a glamorous lounge, the ‘Manderley’.
#Sleep no more mckittrick hotel free
The director, Felix Barrett, likens it to a decompression chamber where guests acclimatise to their new world before being set free in it. Guests continue upstairs to a pitch-black maze of fabric-lined corridors. They are directed to a coat check and then to the front desk, where they’re given a playing card. The entrance to the building is marked with a small plaque on the wall.Īudience members step through a large pair of doors and find themselves in a dimly lit corridor. A bar on the second floor called the ‘Manderley’ provides rest and respite from the chaos of the other locales. Each character plays three one-hour loops, returning to their initial location at the end of each hour. The cast includes about twenty-five actors, who adopt the dress and aesthetic style of the late 1930s, inspired by the shadowy atmosphere of film noir. The show covers 100,000 sq ft and includes about a hundred rooms. One of these involves Agnes Naismith, a young woman who arrives in town to search for her missing sister. There are several sub-plots, which occasionally interconnect with the main story. The main story of Macbeth takes place throughout the building, but is primarily based on the first three floors.
The name ‘McKittrick’ is taken from Hitchcock’s ‘Vertigo’. The high street on the fourth floor is called Gallow Green, after an area in Paisley where six people were hanged for witchcraft. There are five floors of action and some of the rooms are dressed as outdoor spaces, located in the town of Glamis in Scotland. The show is based on Shakespeare’s Macbeth and is also influenced by the films of Alfred Hitchcock and the Paisley witch trials of 1697. Six weeks before opening, and two days after the outbreak of World War II, the legendary hotel was condemned and left locked, permanently sealed from the public. ‘Completed in 1939, The McKittrick Hotel was intended to be New York City’s finest and most decadent luxury hotel of its time. The history of the hotel is detailed in the programme notes – ‘Sleep No More’ is performed in an old warehouse in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighbourhood, which has been transformed into a dimly-lit, 1930s establishment called The McKittrick Hotel. The photographs are mostly from the New York show, but some are from the Boston and Shanghai productions. They’ve been pieced together from various blogs and websites, which are listed at the bottom of the page. The following notes are about the character loops in the New York version of ‘Sleep No More’, a play by Punchdrunk Theatre. Catherine Campbell The Bellhop The Porter
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