Politics
‘Sleep No More’ Megafans Face End of an Addictive Show
The immersive theater experience in Chelsea has been running since 2011. Now it is scheduled to shut in late November.
Good morning. It’s Monday. James Barron is off today. We’ll meet superfans who have seen the interactive theater experience “Sleep No More” not once, not twice, but hundreds of times.
Emma Story, left, and Ariel Cantrell, two superfans at the McKittrick Hotel.Credit…Jane Kratochvil
Emma Story, a 43-year-old software developer, has seen the immersive theater piece “Sleep No More” 124 times. “Everybody thinks I’m crazy,” she said.
She is not the only one who has frequented this kaleidoscopic, wordless Off Broadway reinterpretation of “Macbeth” again and again.
In line for “Sleep No More” on a recent Sunday night were Jessica Bonn (330 visits since 2013), Sophia Li (around 430 visits since 2016; she has lost count) and Dee Anne Anderson (315 visits since 2011, the year “Sleep No More” opened in Chelsea in adjoining warehouses that were reimagined as the McKittrick Hotel).
These superfans were eager to once again enter the dizzying world of “Sleep No More,” a universe where they wear white Venetian masks and experience Shakespeare’s characters darting through 100 intricately decorated rooms. In one, Lady Macbeth’s bathwater splashes viewers as she gets the “damn spot” out. In another, three witches give Macbeth his prophecies while dancing naked around the audience members in a strobe-lit rave.
