Make your own ‘Macbeth’

In eerie ‘Sleep No More,’ the audience wanders through the Bard’s bloody business

October 16, 2009|Don Aucoin, Globe Staff

BROOKLINE - I’ve seen “Macbeth’’ numerous times over the years, but never before has that villainous usurper of the Scottish throne actually shouldered me aside on his way to the feast where he will meet the harrowing sight of Banquo’s ghost. Nor have I ever before found myself face to face with Macbeth as he made his way toward his lethal Lady in their bedroom, forcing him to steer me to one side (and brushing my notebook in the process).

Hey, I got off easier than some of Macbeth’s other foes. And a few awkward moments were a small price to pay for the mesmerizing experience of “Sleep No More,’’ a coproduction by the British theater troupe Punchdrunk and the American Repertory Theater that is now haunting the halls and classrooms of the Old Lincoln School here.

This ingenious and mostly wordless reworking of Shakespeare’s tragedy of ambition, power, and guilt draws its title from Macbeth’s remark to Lady Macbeth, after he has murdered Duncan, the king of Scotland: “Methought I heard a voice cry ‘Sleep no more! Macbeth does murder sleep.’ ’’

This production makes similarly short work of our assumptions, right from the start, when we are directed to don white masks. Looking (and feeling) like extraterrestrials, we wear these masks as we move from room to room and scene to scene, accompanied by the constant churning hum of ominous sound effects.

The action of “Sleep No More’’ unfolds right under our noses. This up-close-and-personal arrangement not only blurs the line between audience and actor, but also raises provocative questions about our role in the evening’s bloody business. As we look on from behind our masks, are we simply witnesses? Accusers? Accomplices?

Adding to our sense of dislocation, we experience “Sleep No More’’ in nonlinear fashion. It all depends on what scene you walk into. You set off with a group that leaves at a specific time, but you’re then free to go off on your own tangent. You can follow one specific character from sequence to sequence, or you can wander randomly into this scene or that. (I was far from the only spectator to suddenly find himself in an actor’s path.) It took me about two hours to take in the entirety of “Sleep No More.’’

This fragmentation of the narrative forces you to, quite literally, put the pieces of the play together. In this, we are like the title characters of “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead,’’ Tom Stoppard’s comic meditation on “Hamlet,’’ as we roam from room to room, sometimes entering in the middle of scenes. Punchdrunk is asking you to take part in a collaborative act of the imagination, to become in a sense the author of your own version of “Sleep No More.’’