![]() A small, non-descript club with cheesy neon lights flickering above its door is home to Macbeth’s famed witches and fascinating lighting show stalls.ĭon’t worry if you lose track of your character or get tired of chasing people around. The third floor might be the most time consuming, with a street full of stores and houses to explore. The second floor, for example, is home to the hotel's check-in desk where audience members may witness a fight or even a murder. However, before we could decipher who the other characters are, the performers suddenly stand up, and scatter in different directions, forcing us to quickly decide who to follow.Įach floor presents a different theme and is composed of different venues. It’s clear that the couple seated at each end of the table is Macbeth and his wife. While there is no verbal communication throughout the show, Sleep No More is able to paint its story through physical movement, eye contact and remarkable sound design. Eight performers, dressed in suits and modern gowns, move in unfathomably controlled motions bewitching the masked audience observing in the dark. With 18 hours of content programmed into the show, Sleep No More promises to provide a show unique to each audience member.įor us, we stumble upon a goosebumps-inducing dining scene at the start. After walking through a pitch-dark tunnel that sets the mood, audience members enter a vintage speakeasy that channels the ambiance of 1930s Shanghai, which also doubles as a safe spot to take a break during the three-hour show.īased on the cards they drew earlier, groups are sent to different floors after each person receives a mask. Sitting quietly on the corner of Beijing Xi Lu, the McKinnon Hotel – an abandoned office space remade to house the show – comes alive each evening with a theatrical experience that engages audiences physically and emotionally.Įntering the show, guests draw from a deck of cards that decide the fate of their journey. Punchdrunk Theater’s much hyped take on Macbeth has become the talk of Shanghai, selling out tickets for the next couple of months since opening in December, with shows recently extended into May. It’s not the first time a Doctor Who story has failed to realise it potential, but we can’t fault it for trying.Lauded as a pioneering work of immersive theater, Sleep No More has enjoyed years-long sold-out runs in New York City, London and Brookline, Massachusetts. “Sleep No More” isn’t boring or offensively bad, it’s just a little underwhelming and the risky found footage format never quite gels. Gatiss’ League Of Gentlemen co-creator Reece Shearsmith has a bit more fun with mad scientist Rassmussen, driven insane by his own abominable creation, but it’s exactly the kind of disingenuous and skin-crawlingly creepy character you’d expect Shearsmith to play, which makes his turn to the dark side wearingly predictable. The troops fail to make much of an impression, only Nagata is fleshed out beyond “blindingly obvious Redshirt” (amusingly each character is given a “survival rating” at the start of the episode). Gatiss gifts the pair some solid gold dialogue but it’s the kind of material they could deliver in their sleep at this stage. Most will have twigged something was amiss the moment the action cut to Clara’s perspective, long before Nagata’s clumsy revelation that the soldiers aren't packing helmet cams.Īfter last week’s magnificent monologuing and Zygon doppelgangers Peter Capaldi and Jenna Coleman settle back into a comfortable groove here. Having the Doctor continually address the camera in a manner that flirts with the fourth wall is quite startling but hypnotically intimate, while it’s neat that the found footage also serves a narrative purpose – rather than GoPros and CCTV it’s the sleep dust in the corner of the characters’ eyes or floating in the air that we’re viewing the action from. ![]() The episode is given an extra wrinkle by its presentation, but the found footage proves as problematic as it does innovative.ĭirector Justin Molotnikov (who helmed many an episode of Merlin) has a decent stab at mimicking the shaky cam format on a no-doubt-tight budget and crafts the odd effective scare out of the chaos. It’s straightforward fare as far as Who siege stories go – lots of running through corridors, plenty of barricading doors and slowly encroaching creatures at every turn. The claustrophobic space station setting provides a welcome change of pace after the globetrotting Zygon two-parter and couldn’t be more different from Mark Gatiss’s series eight offering “Robot Of Sherwood”. It isn’t even the first base-under-siege story this series. What “Sleep No More” certainly isn’t, however, is Doctor Who’s first base-under-siege story.
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