As the theater company Emursive's follow-up to Sleep No More, a premium "immersive" experience they co-produced with Punchdrunk that lasted over a decade as a genuine New York City phenomenon, the new work Life And Trust is both cursed and blessed. Cursed, because its predecessor's shadow is so long that I've been struggling to even call this by its own name, and blessed, because few theatrical productions are able to debut with this much buzz. Riding the wave of publicity from Sleep No More's closing and the curious arrival of a publicly accessible, Art Deco–inspired coffee shop in the show's Financial District space, Life And Trust has already enjoyed months of anticipation and intrigue. I took the plunge on Wednesday, much less prepared for what I would find than in the Sleep No More journey I'd heard people raving about for years. What I got is hard to summarize. Life And Trust is in almost every way a blockbuster sequel. It's also an unsettling acid trip that, the day after, kind of feels as though it happened to someone else. Most movingly, it's a testament to the sheer labor that goes into these shows night after night, transforming a empty space into a place for those unique connections that immersive shows promise, and only sometimes deliver.
Light spoilers follow.
Those familiar with Sleep No More will feel right at home from the beginning of Life And Trust. (Be warned, though: The space is toasty.) While this particular iteration takes you through a bank and not a hotel, the excellent house staff lead the same routine of check-in, bag check, phone lock, and prelude at a themed bar (the coffee shop, after hours). Once your party is selected for entrance, it deviates a bit from the formula with an actual scene of spoken dialogue, wherein things get supernatural. The audience is given masks to wear at all times and instructed not to speak for the length of the show. Let loose in a gigantic and disorienting space of multiple floors, you're left to traverse the open world to catch whatever moments of silent, choreographed interaction between performers you can find.
Life And Trust was an even more ambiguous story for me than Sleep No More because, by the time I saw the earlier show, its cult fanbase had already posted more than enough material online to track the entire arc of every character. Denied also the footholds of identifiable scenes from Macbeth, on which Sleep No More was loosely based, and placed instead in what I believe is an original plot inspired by Faust, there wasn't much to rely on but my own intuition. In part because the actors were easier to follow from scene to scene thanks to less running and wider staircases, I didn't stay put in a few key spots like I did on my Sleep No More visit, where I saw maybe only half the sets as I determinedly witnessed "The Rave" and then stuck to a spellbinding Lady Macbeth in her bedroom. This time, I purposely tried to take in the entirety of the space, clenching my teeth through the dark hallways that provoked real feelings of danger in my brain.
Everyone's time is inevitably going to be different, but here are my tips for doing Life And Trust "the good way." If you see a huge group of people moving in one direction or trying to cram into a room, go elsewhere. Don't try to stay with a partner—separate from your friend or lover and compare your (often wildly different) notes over drinks afterward. Do not, under any circumstances, get high to see this show.
Life And Trust is undeniably a tourist attraction—not always a bad thing!—and Sleep No More hardcores seem to take a certain pleasure in kvetching about those audience members who don't "get it" or aren't "doing it right." But if my time in this universe is any indication, you don't need practice runs to enjoy yourself. With a little bit of luck, some good fight-or-flight instincts, and the physical privilege of swift movement, the payoffs can be tremendous. About 45 minutes (maybe, who knows?) into the three-hour show, I got on what I can only describe as a roll. Scene after scene drew me in with no lulls, and I was rewarded for my choices with beautiful dance sequences in that Sleep No More style that tiptoes the line between sex and violence. All the preshow material for Life And Trust essentially disguises that there are actors even involved, and I don't know anybody's name, but the red-headed demon handcuffed to the bar of a tavern and the chemist filled with longing in a lab next door are two women who will stay in my heart just like the maniacal, tragic Lady Macbeth of Sleep No More. When you see someone pass by and follow your curiosity into some hidden adventure of theirs, unlocking some understanding of their weaknesses and desires, Emursive's work can perform the magic of making you feel like the true protagonist—like this sprawling show is actually only taking place right where you stand.
These adventures aren't accidents. There's a very good and thorough and mega-viral video from Jenny Nicholson about her deeply underwhelming stay at Disney's now-shuttered Star Wars hotel, which was basically a multi-day immersive performance. Despite a marketing campaign that promised to put each traveler at the center of their own Star Wars story, the actual hotel was woefully unable to give their guests that kind of personal attention. The visuals of the common areas impressed on a TikTok, but the limitations of the production drained all feelings of playfulness and spontaneity from the experience. The bleakest detail, to me, was the amount of time in which Nicholson's only "involvement" in the story was scanning QR codes to receive automated congratulations in an app. That's about as lonely a "theatrical" event as I can imagine.
What Nicholson described as her alienation from the performance is nothing more extraordinary than a staffing shortage. The core emptiness of the Star Wars hotel had everything but price in common with the frustration of waiting for the one employee at Walgreens to come unlock the toothpaste shelf. In greedier hands, Life And Trust could have been the same disappointment—a set that takes your breath away, then reveals nothing more underneath. But with what I'm pretty sure is a significantly larger cast than the Sleep No More ensemble, not to mention the heroic battalion of ushers who subtly indicate where you should and should not step, Life And Trust fills its space with ... well, life. Unless you're actively avoiding people, rarely will you feel isolated or abandoned for long, because Emursive has liberally showered events and spectacles across the audience's nonlinear paths.
Immersive theater is big business. But as much as the money spent on atmosphere can daze you during the first few minutes of a show, the vast resources on display in Life And Trust or Rise Of The Resistance aren't inherent to immersion. One of the best productions I've seen in the city this year is The Vicky Archives at the non-profit incubator The Tank. To any producers reading this: PLEASE bring it back. For everyone else who likely didn't catch it, it's a show where your ticket is an invitation into a secretive, possibly cultish society where members train to reach the enlightenment of the archives' namesake. The space upstairs at The Tank showed obvious signs of wear and made generous use of cheap curtains to achieve its immersion; I could probably stage a performance in my apartment with only slight sacrifices in scale. But it was the the actors, their eyes, their talent for existing alongside you, engaging you like they weren't playing a character, that transformed The Vicky Archives into a seductive and unpredictable trip. If you're a theater company and want your customers to simply pace between static rooms, open a furniture store instead. If you want to offer them an emotional high, that constantly sought reward that immersive theatergoers seek, hire people.
Correction (4:00 p.m. ET): A previous version of this blog wrongly identified Punchdrunk as the producers of Life And Trust.
