Knowing that I only caught a fraction of the story is exactly what made it so intriguing.

I never did connect all the plot lines and I’m still unsure if I even met all the characters. I was on pins and needles wondering what I missed. I left the show unsettled, in an altered state of reality as I walked back to my hotel under the Chelsea Highline. This forces you to focus on everything, look through family photographs, and rummage through drawers, all adding to the fully immersive feel. Since there’s very little spoken dialogue, you’ll never know which details of the set and the story are integral to the overall message and which are merely ambiance. Although I wasn’t technically part of the story, the show is clearly participatory. To illicit such an emotional response is not easily done. Not once, but twice, I found myself completely alone in a silent cemetery that creeped me out so much I ran to a different set. At one point, I had to walk away from a nurse who never took her gaze off me, her eye contact burning a hole through my mask. More often than not, I found myself chasing characters down staircases, barely keeping up with them to find out what happens next. Photo by Robin Roemer and supplied by Sleep No More, used with permission (no photos are allowed during the performance) That is how I found myself wearing a white Venetian mask, silently roaming through elaborately-designed sets, half entranced and half confused. You can’t watch it all, meaning everyone’s experience is unique. Each actor tells their own story, with other actors simultaneously telling interconnected stories in other rooms and other floors. Instead of sitting in an audience and watching the show, you’re free to independently wander and follow cast members as you wish.

In a converted Chelsea warehouse, theater-goers are welcomed to the “ McKittrick Hotel” and challenged to participate in a story that’s one part Macbeth, one part Hitchcock, one part interpretive dance, and one part escape room.

Sleep no more rolt