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rissarants · 4 months

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Farewell, My Favorite Fever Dream

Note: If you're only interested in my final show's recap, scroll down a bit. Obviously, spoiler warning. My Previous History with Sleep No More Before this past Saturday afternoon, it had been about a decade since I last checked into The McKittrick Hotel. What I thought would be my final visit was in October of 2013, my best friend and I attended another Sleep No More show that was promptly followed by Panic! At The Disco's album release party. It was an incredible evening, despite the "give me a vodka cranberry, this time with vodka" incident that resulted in a bartender gleefully sending me into a drunken spiral. It was my fourth show and I assumed it would be my last. After all, how many times could a person justify seeing the same show? (After perusing the Sleep No More subreddit and discord... apparently a lot. How the hell are you all affording this?!)

Content with my experiences and convinced I had seen all there was to see, I put that obsession behind me.... or so I thought.

The mysterious and cryptic world of Sleep No More lingered in the back of my head like a haunting melody that refused to fade. Occasionally I would reminisce about the blue-tinged forest maze, the smell of the hotel lobby, and recall my 1:1 with Hecate. I relished retelling my experiences to people who had never been to the show. During the peak of my obsession, I had recapped a couple of my visits here on Tumblr (Sleep No More and The Third Time's The Charm) and I would return long after this blog had grown dormant just to reread those posts. I had toyed with the idea of returning, but as I grew older and life became more expensive, so did the show. I couldn't justify dropping that amount of money on something I had seen four times already. Then came the closing announcement. Suddenly I found myself pulling up the site, going over current ticket prices, and wishing I could take that leap. But I was no longer the financially irresponsible 20-something without real responsibility. I'm in my thirties, a mother, and have things like preschool tuition to worry about.

After a casual conversation with my in-laws over Thanksgiving dinner, the topic of Sleep No More was brought up. Immediately I was gushing about how much I adored the show, my past experiences, and how I had never reached that elusive 6th floor. As a result, they ended up buying me two tickets as my gift for Christmas. They had sprung for the Oz's Guest tickets, so we were able to get priority entry, a table, and a complimentary coat check. It was an incredibly generous gift, and I was nearly moved to tears. I was finally going back. My Final Show Recap After an excruciating month of waiting and obsessing, the day had finally arrived. I was going with my husband who had never attended but heard my stories and was looking forward to seeing it for himself. I wanted him to go in mostly blind and only gave him the most basic of tips (e.g. if an actor offers their hand, take it. If you hear techno music, run towards it.) He understood that we would not be going on this adventure together, I refused to be one of those obnoxious couples who held hands the entire time. Half of the fun is going with someone, separating from them once you enter the hotel, and then talking about what you both experienced afterward. For myself, I had done a bit of research before this final show and was hoping to follow the loops of characters I hadn't paid attention to before. While I had this initial plan, I also promised myself that I would go with the natural flow of things. I had been warned about the aggressive crowds and didn't want to let anything like that spoil my final visit. We arrived early, were checked in swiftly, and given a pair of playing cards (aces, which meant we would be in the first group.) Before I knew it, "The Man Who Knew Too Much Prelude" was filling my ears as we navigated the pitch-black maze that acts like a portal to the Manderley bar. We had a table waiting for us, but since we had aces there was not enough time for a drink. Our group was called, and Steve and I were separated almost immediately. I ended up on the elevator and he was in another group that went up some stairs.

I was the first person off of the elevator and the doors shut quickly behind me. For a split second, I thought I may have been dumped out on the 6th floor, but unfortunately, it was the 5th floor. I spotted the familiar bathtubs and beds of the King James Sanitorium and began to wander. I weaved through the Birch Forest maze, which was every bit as eerie and confusing as I remembered. I saw Matron Lang hanging out in her wooden hut and watched her through the window for what felt like a long time. Eventually, I grew a bit bored and wandered down to Macbeth's bedroom.

I watched the scene where Lady Macbeth eventually convinces her husband to murder Duncan. It was at this point that I considered trying to follow Macbeth throughout the first loop and chased him to the canopy where a sleeping Duncan lay. I watched as Macbeth smothered him with a pillow, a long brutal scene where we had to stand there helplessly as Duncan fought back angrily, eventually weakening and giving up with a final twitch. Macbeth tried to wash his hands in a basin, only to realize that they were now covered in blood. I still can't believe that I somehow missed this pivotal moment in my previous shows. At this point, a sizeable crowd had gathered around the (quite handsome) actor who played Macbeth and I noticed a few aggressive women were shoving their way to the front. It was then that I decided to hang back with Duncan's dead body to see what would happen next. I believe it was Banquo who came in, found the body, and began ringing the bell. Malcolm and Macduff arrived, and they all expressed their grief, eventually bringing the body down to the crypt. Again, a pushy crowd had begun to gather and I craved space. I went up a flight or two and heard the unmistakable techno beats of the witches' second prophecy/rave/blood orgy thing. I immediately changed course and followed the beats to the long, dark, hallway topped with a neon sign that once read "Hello There" but now simply stated "Hell here." The rave scene is still as impactful as it was the first time I had seen it... complete sensory overload. I ended up in a spot where I was front and center, watching as Hecate whipped the other witches up into a frenzy. The beat dropped and the strobe lights kicked in, causing the scene to be presented in short flashes. The Boy Witch completely nude, on top of a table wearing an animal's head. Macbeth presented with a bloody infant. The guttural screams of the witches' power.

I stayed after the rave to witness the Sexy Witch do her exhausted, eerie dance behind the bar as Hecate watched. Afterward, Hecate and Agnes had a tense moment where the former gathered the latter's tears in a little glass vial.

It was at this point that I decided to follow Agnes back to her apartment, the Tailor made his creepy appearance through her closet, and the loop restarted. I tried sticking with Agnes for as long as I could, getting to see her dance with the Tailor, steal his money, and eventually make her way to the hotel lobby.

It was there that I was reunited with an old character I remembered fondly: the Porter. While I did not have a true 1:1 with him in my previous shows, he did give me the note that eventually led to my cherished Hecate 1:1. That was then followed by a frantic, yet fruitless attempt at finding her ring.

This time I hung back and observed as the Porter had his tea scene with Agnes, followed by a drunken dance as he cleaned up the hotel. I have to say that this actor was incredibly good, mixing a bit of rage, sadness, and silliness as he leaped around the room pulling sheets from lamps. After the Boy Witch arrived to taunt and then cruelly reject the Porter, one of the other white masks (audience members) was whisked away into the Porter's office for a 1:1. At this point, I admit that I was feeling a little confused about what to do next. I was approximately halfway through this final show and had an anxious feeling about wasting the precious moments I had left. I recalled reading how you could gain access to the 6th floor 1:1 by encountering a nurse on the 5th floor. I decided to check it out quickly, hoping that I would get lucky.

Instead, I ran into Nurse Shaw, who was doing an odd dance in the window between the bathtubs and the forest. I followed her through the woods and ran into Matron Lang who seemed transfixed by the Nurse. They both seemed to mirror each other's movements and the Matron started moving through the maze in an attempt to catch up to the Nurse. She was unsuccessful as the Nurse disappeared back through her window, and I decided to follow a slightly dejected Matron Lang back to her hut. She walked up the steps to the wooden hut and turned around, staring right into my eyes. It was at this moment that she extended her hand. I suddenly felt breathless as the sensation of butterflies tinged with fear filled my chest. Tears welled up in my eyes as I realized I would be experiencing a 1:1 at my final show. I slowly took her hand, and she pulled me up into the hut.

My 1:1 with Matron Lang She was silent as she shut the door behind me, followed by the window, and then turned to face me. She slowly removed my mask, all the while never breaking eye contact, and whispered something along the lines of "That's better." I tried to say thank you, but the words caught in my dry mouth, my tongue suddenly feeling foreign and useless.

She offered me a seat, went to her desk, and prepared a cup of tea. As she did so, she locked eyes with me in a small mirror. She was not smiling. I wanted to look away, but it was so unnerving that I felt like I had to hold her gaze in fear of seeming rude.

She handed me the cup of tea with a spoon and leaned forward expectantly. I didn't know what she wanted, so after a couple of awkward beats, she gently grabbed my hand to guide the spoon into the tea and then into her mouth. I fed her the tea about three times, slowly and trying not to let my shaking hand spill any liquid onto her face.

The entire time she stared at me. I'm sure she blinked at some points, but I swear it felt like her piercing eyes never moved.

After the tea, she quietly told me a story about a young child who was all alone. "Once upon a time there was a poor child with no mother and no father. Everything was dead, and there was nobody left in the whole world. Everything was dead. The boy went on search day and night and since there was no one left on earth he wanted to go up into the heavens. The moon looked at him so friendly! But when he finally got to the moon, the moon was a piece of rotten wood. And then he went to the sun, and when he got there, the sun was a wilted sunflower. And when he went to the stars they were little golden flies stuck up there like the shrike sticks them on the blackthorn. And when he wanted to go back to earth, the earth was an overturned piss pot. And he was all alone. And he sat down and he cried, and he is still there to this day, all alone." (Apparently, this is from Büchner’s Woyzeck. I had to look it up when I got home.)

As she whispered this story, her eyes began to fill with tears, prompting mine to do the same. She held my palm, tracing the lines and occasionally squeezing my hand. She then leaned far back in her chair, pulling my hand with her so I had to lean forward. Without warning, she flung forward, grabbed my shoulders as I gasped, and whispered "It'll have blood they say, blood will have blood." She got up, put my mask on, and showed me the door. As I left, she shut the door behind her, and I was back in the woods with other white masks who were staring at me intently. I walked past them as I tried to regulate my breathing and figure out what to do next. After that adrenaline rush, the rest of the night was a bit of a blur. I bounced between characters as the crowds grew larger and more unruly. I saw the angry Taxidermist searching for something, finally caught the ballroom party, and helped another white mask catch pregnant Lady Macduff when she passed out. I saw the Bald Witch's transformation, the rave one final time, and then followed the Sexy Witch to the apothecary.

She knelt down, dress still hanging off of her with her chest exposed. She washed the blood off of her skin and hair in a small bowl, then stood and handed me a towel. I helped towel her off slowly, she then fixed her dress and grabbed me close to whisper "Blood will have blood" in my ear.

I followed her out to the last banquet and had a front-row spot for the finale. I'll never be able to properly describe how that scene makes me feel. The slow-motion acting, the allusion to 'The Last Supper", Macbeth's frantic "NO", followed by the snap of the noose. Absolutely chilling.

The wood groaned under the weight of the swinging body, with the creaking eventually drowned out by "A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square" by Glenn Miller. We were all herded out of the hotel in a haze, greeted by a loud jazz band playing old-timey renditions of current popular songs. It's a jarring switch of moods, which only seemed to exacerbate my post-show disorientation.

The 6th floor still eludes me.

Is that all there is?

#sleep no more #the mckittrick hotel #punchdrunk #sleep no more nyc #immersive theatre #macbeth

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my-burnt-city · 6 months

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yeah, uhhh.....

how are we losing sleep no more too? are we watching the real time death of the large-scale mask show, 'cos.........

i mean, we'd *never* be ready

but does it have to be happening all at once

#sleep no more #sleep no more nyc #mckittrick hotel #the mckittrick hotel #punchdrunk #punchdrunk theatre #immersive theatre #immersive #is that all there is?

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localcuttlefish · 1 month

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I got cucked at the McKittrick Hotel and all I got was this stupid shirt

#the mckittrick hotel #mckittrick hotel #sleep no more nyc #sleep no more #REAL SHIT THOUGH WHERE’S THE GODDAMN RING HECATE IS LOOKING FOR #I SPENT A WHOLE 30 MINUTES LOOKING FOR IT

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te-pu-si-ti · 4 months

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A Trojan Shade visits the McKittrick Hotel: Day One

I saw Sleep No More once, four years ago. I'd say that it changed my life, in the way that anything beautiful and innovative that shows you a new way to experience art is 'life-changing'. But I didn't know how much it truly would change my life: introducing me to Punchdrunk, who would open a show in London a few years later. Which would become the best part of my life, for eighteen months.

Now, on my way to family Christmas, I was able to stop in New York for five shows of Sleep No More before it all goes away.

My first day was a double. Two shows, only three full character loops really, but so much to take in.

I did not do research before this show. I wanted to go in relatively blind, which is to say "not really blind at all" because I have been reading about SNM for the past two years. But I tried to stay fairly un-spoiled, because that sense of exploration and bewilderment was important to me, for this first show. I gave myself permission to look up everything I wanted afterwards.

I did one bit of "homework" - I watched Rebecca on the plane. It is a fantastic film. So I was interested in finding those connections, if I could.

Sunday Matinee

In the rules before the lift, they outright mentioned that today was a sold-out show (as they all are from here on out). I had booked these shows before the closure announcement, hoping that the matinee shows would be fairly empty... but fate had other plans.

First lift, I had no idea where I was going, but luckily everybody else did, so I followed them down to the ballroom. I didn't see this scene on my first visit! Nor the rave. Nor the banquet, until the finale. I struggle to remember much of anything that I saw during my first show - just vague flashes of a forgotten dream.

I just stood there, huge smile on my face, watching the dancers up close, the enchanting music (which stayed in my head all week), the lovely costumes, all of it. A witch winked at me as she spun past. I can't believe I'm really back.

There was one character in the ballroom who piqued my interest - staying on the sidelines, stern-faced, looking rather familiar. It must be Mrs Danvers.

Despite the full show, I had Danvers to myself for the majority of her loop. I couldn't have been more pleased, following her around like a little puppy, just me and her - something I hadn't experienced in the final months of TBC. No character was ever alone at a sold-out TBC show.

Is she the most flashy loop? Well, no. But I found her a perfect introduction to this visit, a fairly easy follow, and a character I definitely wanted to tick off my list.

She's so my type. Like Oracle, like Luba, a utility character, tidying up and setting up. She felt familiar. She felt comfortable, even though I didn't yet know her.

Covering up the clocks, dozens of them all over the walls, their ticking sound deafening. Time is marching on.

A beautiful push-and-pull between her and the Porter, on the sofa of the hotel, Lady MacDuff caught in the middle.

She waves her hand over the milk, as if enchanting it. It could just as easily be a mundane drug or poison, but she gives it something of the arcane.

As she mixes it, I get a jolt of memory - I have been here before. I have watched her mix the milk, and I have followed her down the stairs with the stained-glass window, the colours so vibrant where everything else is so sepia-toned, to the dead man.

He wakes up, she puts him to bed, and she's sticking her hand down her skirt - I blink in surprise, I wait for a more innocent explanation to arise, but no, she is doing what I think she's doing, until the man wakes up and she returns to attention.

A beautiful, beautiful sequence with Lady MacD and the milk again, jumping from table to table, this show makes such beautiful use of the mundane elements of the set as spaces to dance over. A table top, a cabinet, a recess in the wall, it's all fair game, and it's thrilling because I truly don't know where they're going to go next. I don't know where the 'safe' areas of these rooms are, which adds a little bit of stress, but keeps me on my toes.

Speaking of 'safe areas'... I continued following Danvers on the mezzanine, when a BM stopped me without warning, and motioned me to step back, onto a raised platform. I was a little confused, until I saw the door being taken off its hinges.

The DOOR. DANCE. HOLY. CRAP. SLEEP NO MORE IS AMAZING HOLY SHIT

I could not believe my eyes.

My second and third loops were less focused, including:

Following Agnes for a bit, until getting a door shut in my face

Finally seeing the rave, from a great spot right by Hecate, so I could look over at her orchestrating it all menacingly - I kept thinking WHY IS NO ONE ELSE LOOKING AT HER, obviously the answer is "the goat and the baby and the blood and the tits" but she was fabulous and no one was paying attention

It's Agnes again, with Hecate this time! Golden light reflection from the lipstick case into her eye. Catching her tears - just so familiar.

A giant hand made of salt????

The Taxidermist is a wonderful weirdo, brushing a fox's fur and then absentmindedly brushing their own hair with the same brush

Fulton in the graveyard with the umbrella, a scene I somehow ran into in four out of my five shows

Post-mortem photography in the album in the funeral home. I wonder how the deceased & family would feel about this: Does it grant them a little extra bit of the immortality that they wanted?

Eventually I wound up in the speakeasy, watching a card game turn violent. Once again, we're ushered up onto a White Mask Holding Area to keep us out of the way. I have mixed feelings about this - when BMs herd us around like this, it breaks the immersion quite a lot. But it also allows for choreo that might otherwise not be possible.

I stayed with whoever got killed (who I now know to be Banquo, but I hadn't a clue at the time) and followed him out onto the high street.

He looks around, then looks at us - then looks at me in particular, notices the blood on his hands and face, and I watch his dawning realisation of what has happened to him. It's masterful.

Noah's Banquo is the last character of my first show, and he will be the first character of my last show. There are a few portrayals that left a lasting impression on me, and this is one of them. I just can't say enough good things.

Sunday Evening

After the afternoon's Danvers loop, I had my eye on Lady MacDuff this show, to see the rest of her story. We climbed the stairs down to the ballroom, arriving before the dance had even started, and I soon noticed that this evening's Lady MacD was the same performer as this afternoon's Danvers (Matilda)!

I put aside a twinge of embarrassment, hoping that she'll take it as a compliment, and I ended up liking her as Lady MacD even better than as Danvers. I think this is a wonderful casting doublet, seeing the same person do both sides of their dances.

I watch a solo on a small bed, there's only a few of us watching and the room is roomy enough, so I scoot in against the wall. The wall is mirrored, so I look behind to make sure I'm not blocking the view - and I realise that the mirror is false. It reflects a room much like the one we're in, but the toy blocks are toppled on the floor, and a blood stain is spreading across the sheets. It's a fun and chilling bit of stage sorcery that I didn't expect at all, and I love it.

She toddles up onto a tall cabinet, unsure footing as she climbs up to a tiny shrine dug out of the wall. I love the way dancers can portray shakiness, awkwardness, clumsiness, while remaining perfectly in control. I worry for her, this pregnant woman so close to losing her footing.

I watch her scenes with Danvers and I love to see the roles reversed. She is wonderful as both, though with her youth, I find her more believable as LMD, and she has a sweet vulnerability. She seems to me a first-time mother.

She packs away baby clothes, and she holds a white dress up against herself, and dances with it. I'm reminded of a scene that Luba used to do sometimes, a dance in the Danaides room with one of the dresses. It seemed, to me, to represent a longed-for femininity, wishing for glamour in an unglamourous life, and here I think maybe she's longing for the life she had before she fell pregnant, feeling an ambivalence to this huge life change - joyful, but a sacrifice too.

She rocks a swaddling blanket like the child she hopes to bring into the world. I'm sure this won't end happily for her, and I'm even more sure when she starts looking into the mirror, and she sees me - our eyes meet and she has this terror on her face, and it takes my breath away.

(I stayed with her for an entire loop, through reset to the second ballroom, and for whatever reason, there was no 1:1 -- but to have a character look at me through a mirror again, that bit of Punchdrunk magic, was worth so much more to me. I don't know how they do what they do, but it means everything.)

Macbeth comes, and she is killed, and later she resurrects - the world turns a ghostly blue, a shade of blue that I associate with the record stop of TBC, a mystical colour, and a very jarring colour in this show. It's perfect.

We reset, she spends some time with her husband, goes back to her little shrine, and soon we reach another ballroom.

The rest of my loop 2 is full of false starts - I try to follow a character, only to see them start running up several flights of stairs, and decide it isn't worth it. I explore Floor 5, reading case files, including Jack Favell from Rebecca.

I see collections of nails, and collections of feathers, and collections of cut-out pages. I go down the lobby and I see a collection of tear vials. All these signals that we have been here before, and we will be here again and again and again.

Eventually I find the Porter in the hotel, and I have been assured that he stays there, so he's exactly who I need for my aching feet. I'm flagging at this point. A double in TBC was hard enough, and I would always fit in a bar loop on those occasions. This is a show that I don't know - I get lost, I run after characters because I don't know where they're going, I can't take shortcuts and I can't take my time. I've been running around for 6 hours.

So I stay in the hotel lobby. I even try to sit on the chairs, though I don't know which chairs might unexpectedly get danced on, so I don't linger.

The Porter is wonderful. I am so charmed by his dance to the ballroom music, and I get hit with another deja vu - I have seen this before, I have watched him prance along the bar, and I was alone there, just me and him. I remember that from 2019, a beautiful moment.

This time, he spends some time balancing a teacup on his head, and then running around with his jacket held behind him like a cape, like a little boy playing superhero. He wins me over immediately.

I get to see Boy Witch's 'Is That All There Is?' and Porter moping in a corner about it.

He takes someone in for a 1:1, and I wait outside at the Lost Property desk, but I'm not waiting alone. There's... another Porter there.

Oh, I've heard about this! They have a celebrity guest in residence, Milo Manheim. It's an iconic 'Sleep No More' move, if you ask me - I had heard about the guest stars long before I knew much of anything about the show. One of those weird little facts that gets passed around like urban legend - Sometimes, they'll randomly have celebrities playing roles there! They don't advertise it, you'll just go and run into, like, Neil Patrick Harris or Evan Rachel Wood or someone.

I like the mini-porter, though. He gives me something to watch while Porter is away. He's on one side of the Lost Property counter, and the cluster of WMs is watching politely from the other side. He takes a piece of paper, folds it in half, and draws a simple outline of a man - sort of a Gingerbread Man type silhouette, but with a long neck.

He tears out the little paper guy, slowly, deliberately, in that very Punchdrunk way where someone is doing something that sounds very boring when you just write it down, but is actually very compelling with the intensity that he puts into it.

He moves to the back of the Lost Property area, leaning against a locker, glancing around, and as he does he twists the neck of the little paper man, turning him around and around and around and I think to myself that must be painful, even though this is just a little paper doll we're talking about. Then, real Porter comes out, and mini-Porter goes in, taking somebody with him.

I see the rest of the loop through with the real Porter, catching a few scenes that I've seen already, but I don't mind that.

He takes Danvers' arm, and they walk together down to the finale. My first day, finished. I have seen so much! I have so much yet to see! What a show.

First Day Closing Thoughts

It was so, so beautiful to be in a world like this again. To uncover a new story in a familiar format. To be taken by surprise. To welcome this show in like an old friend.

However: I cannot overstate how physically taxing I found this show. Like, it's not accessible to certain people. I don't consider myself disabled or anything - I'm just in my thirties, have back and joint pain, and am not athletic. But I still felt that this show was not made for me. TBC was spread over only two levels and people joked that this was a concession for an aging fanbase, but now I think it's not such a joke actually! Those stairs are killer.

There are some characters who only stay on a single floor, and there are some characters who do a few flights of stairs but not many, or not quickly. And if I had that extra familiarity with this show, or had been willing to do more research beforehand, I could have found that out. Instead, I fucked up my back and my feet over the course of my double, so this is my caution to you: Pace yourself!

But, I mean, my discomfort was temporary and my trip was a one-time opportunity. My sore feet will heal, and fitting 5 shows into 3 days was a necessary evil since I was travelling from far away.

This show is dark. I get that dim lights are part of the format - but I found the lights much darker than TBC. The dim glow of dusty old bulbs reigns throughout, while TBC has areas of neon and more theatrical lighting which can be brighter without upsetting the mood. I struggled to appreciate the set and even the performers' faces, because of the lack of light.

These are just nitpicks and minor gripes though - overall, it was breathtaking. Overall, there is nothing like coming back into a Punchdrunk world. Overall, my main takeaway is there is so much more here. I can't wait to take in more.

Next up: Day Two (featuring a 1:1, and a Weirdo who I instantly fell in love with) and Day Three (One More Double, and my absolute favourite loop)

#sleep no more #punchdrunk #sleep no more nyc #sleepnomorenyc #the mckittrick hotel #snm oc #immersive theatre

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bargarraninc · 4 months

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the child of a traitorous thane; musings on sleep no more's porter

SON He has killed me, mother. Run away, I pray you! [Dies.]

— Macbeth, Act IV. 2

There is a certain beauty to the Porter's character in Sleep No More — for he exists only in the transitional space of the Lobby, a minion of Hecate meant to set up the important scenes through which the looping tragedy of Macbeth will continue to flow. Without him, Banquo is not given the letter holding his prophecy, Malcolm never learns of the falcon shot down, the prophecy cannot take place.

The Porter is loop-aware — there is a consistent deterioration in the character as the show goes on, everything becoming harder and harder for him to deal with. Throughout setting up the scene for the next magical cycle, he is well aware what his actions lead to. It is why he tries to stall Agnes from going upstairs, to where he knows she will be put through the harrowing ordeal of tear collection by Hecate. He tries to keep her safe, failing each time.

Another party that he desperately (moreso than with Agnes) tries to keep safe is Lady Macduff, the innocent murdered for sins not hers in any manner. This is the most intrusive we see the Porter — as he tries to bat off Danvers and her poisonous milk, milk he knows will render Lady Macduff incredibly vulnerable and thus easier to kill.

In Shakespeare's Macbeth, the chief character who attempts a similar, desperate protection of the Lady and who too fails is the Lady's young son. Stabbed to death by the Murderers, her son cries to his mother — begging for her to run away, abandoning him in his last minutes as to save herself from a similar fate. Reversing the traditional parent-to-child protection, the kind we see with Banquo and Fleance when they are attacked, here, the child must be the protector.

Every loop, our Porter fights off Danvers and loses, watching Lady Macduff grow weaker in the aftermath of drinking the accursed milk. He then hears her death, tortured by its violent sounds as he hides in the lost luggage space, desperately trying to distract himself. Then, everything resets again, actions supplemented by his own hands and he continues to live this harrowing loop again and again and again. Why?

In my eyes, our Porter is not only Hecate's lost child in the forest but also the lost son of the Macduff's. The child doomed to protect his mother. After all, Fife is a wooded area.

The Porter is actively putting himself through the loops, losing himself to the inertia of Hecate's endless time magic, out of a deep, child-like hope that this time, he will be able to set things aright. Maybe, it will be this loop, just one more each time, that he will be able to protect his mother from the brutal fate she suffers. Just one more try. Hope keeps him centred as he hands away the note for Lady Macbeth to Danvers, moping in the phonebooth, knowing it will restart his suffering.

There is more substance in the performance to support the Macduff Child theory —

When Lady Macduff is murdered, something he is intimately aware of and scared by, the Porter hides himself into the Lost Luggage. He leans into childish methods of comfort, making paper boats and busying themselves playing with it, even if the boat is made of a tearful letter to his tormentor that he knows will be ignored. Some Porters even tear up at the noises, cowering closer to the counter.

The Porter only emerges from Lost Luggage when not only the murderer Macbeth but Macduff too is gone. In Macbeth, the only conversation we see between Lady Macduff and her son concerns her worriation that her husband is a traitor — abandoning her and her children in a place which he himself finds too dangerous to stay in. There is little affection lost for Macduff on the end of the Porter. He waits for him to be gone, only willing to put himself through the torment if it is to comfort his mother, to give her her coat. His traitorous father, gone again to protect the son of another.

Lady Macduff's messes are cleaned up with a gentleness the Porter shows little of to the other residents (bar Boy who he is in love with) who pass like storms through the Lobby. As he collects her strewn clothes, the Porter dons them with a childish glee, resembling more than ever a child rifling through their mother's cupboard, finding something that makes them feel beautiful. The clothes are collected carefully and packed away, her coat is kept safely hooked. Her presence in the lobby, even through just her abandoned possessions, is looked after gently.

You can never know the true story behind the residents of The McKittrick — for those are secrets they keep close to their hearts, lost in their chosen silence. But, this personal retelling of the Porter's story as I understood it is one I can share easily and so I do. My poor Porter, my poor poor Porter.

#immersive theatre #sleep no more #sleep no more nyc #punchdrunk #sleepnomorenyc #the mckittrick hotel #musings about the mckittrick #the porter

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