Sleep No More mk. II, Aphrodite's Revenge

I'm still not even sure how to review Sleep No More the second time around, except that as long as Punchdrunk keeps putting on avant-garde Macbeth-themed film noir immersive interactive survival horror haunted house theater, they've got more of my money than I should really be spending. Which they already have, but it was still completely worth it. The main changes this time I guess were that it was a little less terrifying -- maybe because we'd seen some of it before, maybe because it was more crowded (a drawback, but I imagine they wanted to let more people in for their Halloweeen weekend special), maybe because relia and I did a better job of staying glued together this time. By which I mean I wandered off less. It's still impossible to go through the McKittrick and not feel submerged in the quiet clammy waters of the world they set up for you, crowd or no crowd.

The Halloween night we went for was last night, Sunday, theme Aphrodite's Revenge where the dress code was "sexy" and "red." We accordingly sexed it up as a sexy Veronica Lake fatale in a long red dress (her) and a sexy piratical Don Juan Triumphant backup dancer (myself), and were probably the sexiest non-staff people there, less on account of our own sexiness (though we were pretty sexy) and more on account of the surprisingly disappointing lack of imagination and costume commitment of the people of NYC. You'd think theatergoing New Yorker men could muster something better than red polo shirts. You'd think wrong, apparently.

It's hard to say how much of the show changed, because it's hard to see most of the show in one go. We spent more time chasing actors this time and watching scenes, so we saw more though it was hard on my poor heel-booted feet (which I later abused more during a dance remix of "Under Pressure" at the afterparty). I feel like there was more sex and blood and bloody sex this time around, which could be a function of Aphrodite's Revenge and could be a function of us, well, seeing more scenes. I think I could follow the story a little better now -- picked out Macduff and Lady Macduff this time too, among others -- but I was we were distracted by a particular whiskered blonde actor who was constantly taking it all off and writhing in the shower and dancing with another handsome fellow and participating in bloody oxhead raves and stuff. We got more attention from the actors this time, probably due to the snazziness of our costumes, which resulted in a lot of silent "what are they trying to get us to do???" charades.

Then on the way home we ate at Denny's and got lost in the Bordentown area, where we are pretty sure the Children of the Corn live.