‘Sleep No More,’ Macbeth-inspired immersive theater experience, to close in January after 5,000th performance
NEW YORK — “Sleep No More,” the “Macbeth”-inspired off-Broadway show that immersed theatergoers in a world peopled by characters from the Shakespeare tragedy, will soon be no more.
The adaptation incorporated dance, with audience participation as a hallmark. It took visitors through five floors of scenes, tableaux and other riffs Shakespeare’s “Scottish play.”
The performance space is the 100,000-square-foot McKittrick Hotel, where visitors don Venetian-style masks that they wear to explore a series of scenes acted out by 25 performers. Action, most of it silent, takes place in about 100 rooms ranging in size from child’s-bedroom to grand ballroom, over several floors.
The show has featured a forest, as well as infirmary, taxidermist, detective agency and more where one can rummage through drawers and read books populating the shelves. “Sleep No More” inspired similar immersive theater events throughout New York City.
“We are incredibly proud of the artistic community Sleep No More has nurtured and the many distinct audiences it has loved in New York,” directors Felix Barrett and Maxine Doyle said in a statement obtained by Playbill.
“Thirteen years ago, we could never have imagined the astonishing journey this show has been on. It’s had an incalculable impact on us all and will live on in our hearts, seep through our skin and sleep in the deepest parts of our imaginations.”
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