If you live in the Boston area, DO NOT miss this: Sleep No More, at the Old Lincoln School in Brookline. It runs through January 3.
And if you have a nature that is excessive and appetitive like mine, you might need to go twice. (I’ve already purchased another block of tickets to go with a gang of friends and my children.)
There are lots of reviews of this installation theater production, links to which I have included at the bottom of the post. But let me just share the essentials: The production is inspired by Shakespeare’s Macbeth and is the work of Punchdrunk, an enigmatic theatrical troupe from the UK. This is their first foray into U.S. territory and they are here in Boston by way of Diane Paulus, artistic director of A.R.T. Paulus saw Punchdrunk in action when she was in London a few years ago. After that initial exposure to their work, Paulus said she could not view any subsequent theatrical event without the overlay of that experience.
Paulus is a seasoned theater pro, but her comment made me think about “never the same” theatrical milestones in my life as an audience participant. Living in New York City in the 70s and beyond, I was altered permanently by a number of theatrical experimentalists:
Robert Wilson. The 12 hour production in Brooklyn of The Life and Times of Joseph Stalin. A Letter for Queen Victoria. And then most memorably, Einstein on the Beach in 1976 at the Metropolitan Opera.
Lee Breuer and Mabou Mines. The Beckett projects and the Shaggy Dog Animations, productions that explored how symbols become characters. And then the unforgettable Gospel at Colonus.
Richard Foreman and the Ontological-Hysteric Theater. Where do I start? His performances were almost impossible to describe but I returned again and again.
Andrei Serban at La MaMa. The Fragments of a Trilogy (composed of three plays: The Trojan Women, Medea, and Elektra ) where the audience becomes the Greek chorus and the proscenium-centric format is annihilated. Greek tragedy is us.
Tony Kushner’s Angels in America. Esoteric Mormonism was laced throughout the story line, so watching the two plays was like stepping into a highly personalized archaeological dig of my tribal past. Most of those references fell outside the expertise of reviewers, but it was clear Kushner had done some deep research into the psyche of this very American religious tradition.
Tom Stoppard. Anything by Sir Tom, but most unforgettably, The Coast of Utopia 12 hour marathon at Lincoln Center in 2007. At the end of the three play performance, I just wanted to do it all over again.
Should Punchdrunk and Sleep No More be added to that list? I want to go again before I make that call. Does the magic wear off with over exposure? (Does anything survive that most difficult of tests?) Will those haunting rooms feel as imbued with magic as they did last week?
Some of these concerns are captured in a review of the production by Frank Rizzo in Variety:
Shakespeare is not so much spoken as gleaned, and if something is lost in the translation, something else is gained in the experience. This, after all, is not “Macbeth” — it’s a very different theatrical animal with its own agenda, not the least of which is to attract adventuresome audiences in search of what’s new and hip. The production abandons text, poetry and linear structure to create a more engaged audience dynamic. But one can also ask what does that experience add up to: a richly imagined reality or just a fleeting dream?
Whether this type of production becomes more than a novelty will depend on one’s nature, sensibility and endurance. Certainly, those without a fundamental understanding of “Macbeth” — and even those who know the play well — might be lost in the maze (in several rooms that possibility is literally true). For the enthusiastic crowd the show attracted in college-crammed Beantown, it is drama as digression, theater as the latest app, and Shakespeare presented in visual tweets.
Will the next production be as gripping or will it just become the old same-new, with better bar selections? (There’s a lounge in the center of the building where a jazz singer and combo perform for those who need a break, or a good stiff drink.)
As for its possible future in the U.S. after A.R.T., the production would be a staggering challenge logistically and financially to duplicate — load-in time alone was said to be months — and would need a market of young auds to support the endeavor. But in the right environment, it could be just the thing to reinvent and enliven a theater community.
Whatever one’s aesthetics, just be sure to bring comfortable shoes. As the old joke about the aging hooker goes, “It’s not the work but the stairs.”
Reviews of Sleep No More and Punchdrunk:
Variety
Edge Boston
Boston Herald
Boston Globe
Arts Boston
Guardian
You are clearly much more adventurous than I. The thought of running around a dark school building among a bunch of masked strangers role-playing does sound like the setting for a Hitchcock or Agatha Christie murder mystery and while I can imagine the thrill for those who love roller coasters, I never did and would be too anxious about the whole thing, though the idea is very intriguing. Clearly, they play on this anxiety, as one of their performances was Poe’s The Masque of the Red Death, a creepy story I love, where one of the characters behind a mask is indeed the Grim Reaper himself. I am still toying with the idea of buying tickets, to push my boundaries, and because it’s almost Halloween, and what Halloween fun is left for adults?
QS, I can imagine that it would sound like an anxiety-producing event. But even though I don’t register anxiety unless it is a 9 on the Richter scale, I do not think this production is playing on anxiety. At one point did I feel unsafe in that darkened school turned Scottish castle. Dream images, the occult, the haunting emptiness that might be found in the back story of the inhabitants of an ancient fortress or a Gosford Park-like estate, snippets of the Macbeths’ nightmarish evil, the evocation of England between the wars, the persistence of symbolic language–yes to all that. Because you are visual, I think you would be deeply moved by the range and depth of what they have done. (And of course the how: as in where in the hell did they find all this stuff anyway?) So that’s my pitch. Let me know what you decide.
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