For what it's worth, I found that following Macbeth helped give a clear idea of the general storyline. As you're following him, he interacts, directly or indirectly, with every one of the characters, and if you're familiar with the play, you can pinpoint exactly what's happening in each scene.
I WOULD like to go back and follow other characters, and explore other rooms. I just wish the tickets were a little cheaper.
I don't think it's a riddle so much as try to open every door and hope you get lucky. But everyone I know who has found it says, as someone here did, that you won't happen upon it by yourself, you need to be taken there.
Is this truly something I'm gonna want to see more than once? I'm scheduled to go my first time on April 23rd, but May tickets are already selling out...so I'm trying to figure out if I can justify buying a second ticket, to something I haven't seen even once!
If you think you might want to based on what you're reading, I'd say go ahead and buy the second ticket, and then on the off chance that you go once, totally hate it and don't want to go again, I can't imagine you'll have a problem unloading it.
I went alone and was fine with it. Even if you go with people, it's quite possible you'd get separated anyway. You won't want someone else to prevent you from exploring where you want to...that's how I felt, anyway.
Friends have 3 tickets for Monday's 7pm slot, and cannot use them. Trying to sell them for as close to face value as possible, since they're here on a massive theatre binge (18 shows or something crazy like that) and needs to save as much $ as possible. Email me at cdvla313@aol.com if you're interested. :)
Just got home from seeing this and I was blown away! Wow. What an experience.
However, I feel like I did something wrong in that I saw the actors perform everything twice. The ballroom scene, the bloody baby room, etc. It kind of took away from the experience a little bit. And I was a bit annoyed at the other audience members, who kept pushing and shoving and practically throwing you out of their way, and the ones who wouldn't get the picture and stop talking.
And now I feel like I really should have read Macbeth in order to kind of know what was going on, because I still have no idea! lol..Can someone explain who was Macbeth and who was Lady M?
All in all, even with these little pet peeves, I had an amazing time, and I would love to go again if I had the time. And any show with that much gratuitous male nudity is alright by me!
Macbeth was the guy who's hung at the end. He's also the guy in the "bloody baby room". I assume you mean the disco witch orgy...it's Macbeth with the witches, and it's taken from the scene in Macbeth in which the witches give him a series of prophecies. One of them is that Macbeth cannot be killed by a man of woman born, and a bloody baby is shown. In the play, Macbeth is ultimately killed by Macduff who was "from his mother's womb untimely ripped" - meaning born of a C- section, thus technically fulfilling the prophecy.
Not sure if you saw the series of bedroom scenes, the one with the bathtub in the middle? Those scenes are between Macbeth and Lady Macbeth.
They're sitting at opposite ends of the table in the dining room scene, which is the Banquet scene in Macbeth, in which the ghost of Banquo, the friend Macbeth has killed (but in this production he kills in a bar fight) appears.
That's the very end, when they drag everyone to the Banquet Scene again (or for the first time, depends on your experience. I saw it twice). I guess maybe some people don't make it there? But it's the very final scene, then lights go out, and everyone is asked to leave.
This is a way in which the set-up of Sleep No More leaves audience members feeling vulnerable. When I saw it in NY, it was my third time seeing it. For a big chunk of the middle of the night I kept ending up back in one of the main rooms, no matter where I went, I kept ending up back there. I was realllllly frustrated. It took effort to stop myself, catch my breath, and remind myself I wasn't doing anything "wrong." With a bit more focus and less distraction, I got myself out of the loop.
As for seeing things twice in the same night, that to me is the recurring dream aspect of it. I actually liked the time I saw the same story twice because once I saw the scenes following Malcolm and then during the next loop I was following MacBeth. Eventually I realized I was getting very different perspectives on the same things. But again, you have to somehow shut your yammering mind off telling you "You've seen this already, you must be missing something somewhere else, you better get there quick."
For those in the know, how many audience members would you say they admit per performance? I hope I get to see it with a well-behaved crowd. One of my biggest pet peeves is people's seeming inability or unwillingness to behave and demonstrate the proper amount of decorum and respect toward the actors and other audience members.
Sometimes the hanging scene at the end doesn't happen. If the wiring or the rigging isn't working properly i guess it just goes to a blackout while he's up on the chair. Another thing that doesn't always happen is Macbeth jumping off the balcony onto the crash cart in the ballroom(happens a little bit after the banquet scene). If the cart isn't working he just wanders around the forest.
I think i read somewhere that each show has about 300 or 350 audience members. The crowds are usually well behaved. I've never seen anyone messing with an actor. Some people get really caught up in what's going on and in trying to follow an actor they might push past other audience members(this happens a lot more towards the end of the night).
Seeing things twice is not a bad thing at all(especially things like the ballroom dancing scene or the banquet scene because most of the main actors take part in it). There is always other action going on SOMEWHERE so if you really don't want to want to see something twice just go wandering around. For instance, take the scene where Macbeth kills Banquo. Maybe the first time you were already in the speakeasy and that just happened. If the next cycle you follow Macbeth around you get a better perspective of what's going on and why he's killing him.
BROADWAY IMPACT!
TAKE ACTION! EQUALITY!
http://www.broadwayimpact.com/
Another one of my problems, which made following people around so hard, was that I'd lose them in the stairways. without fail. I would find someone to follow, but invariably, they'd go to the stairs, and I'd lose them because of all the people on the stairs.