Show #6
Tuesday, September 17: 7 pm
This was it. The last hurrah. Five
shows in three days, a single night off, and now, my very last trip
to Temple Studios. I wasn't ready to leave. I didn't know how to
handle the idea that I would never again return. So I started doing
what I always do in high stress situations, and what proved to, in
some ways, be my downfall. I started over-planning.
Long before I even got on the plane, I
had made a particular decision about my strategy – I was going to
devote a loop at my last show to revisiting my favorite character
loop from the rest of the weekend. I imagine (Romola) that I don't
(Romola) need to explain who (Romola) that was, if you (Romola) have
been reading my other recaps (not Faye, although I can see where one might get that idea). But there was a potential snag in the
plan: After my talk with some of the actors after the show on Sunday,
and the revelation of just how aware they are of the audience as
individuals, I just didn't feel comfortable following Romola if she
was going to be played by Sonya Cullingford again. After all, I had
seen nearly all of her Romola loop (just not all at once) and done a
mostly complete Faye loop with her as well, both of which involved
direct interaction (a 1:1 and a dance after the murder,
respectively). Might it seem kind of weird and stalkerish if I
showed up with her again in such a short timeframe? Maybe, maybe not, but I didn't want to
risk it. I had similar, but lesser concerns about Katie Mcguinness,
since I had only seen her on the first night – but again, as
Romola. I basically just had to hope that she would be played by Katie Lusby
or even Miranda Mac Letten, who did not play Romola according to the
National Theater or spoiler group cast lists, but who had told me she
would be starting soon. I figured that gave me a 50-50 shot.
I arrived and anxiously checked the
cast list. Sonya was Romola. So there was that plan, scuppered. My
next thought was to follow Wendy instead – it would be a shame to
go six times and never do a full loop with one of the leads. Of
course, that's just the way I am, to some degree. Eleven times at
Sleep No More and I've never done a full, start to finish run with
either of the Macbeths. I just have such a fascination with the side
characters. But Shawn had already claimed her for the first loop, so
I would have to go somewhere else.
Thus, I wound up entering the show in a
state of confusion, with no idea what I was going to do. I was let
off in the basement and immediately rushed up to the ground floor,
hoping to just find. . . something. I didn't know what. I found
Dolores (Jane Leaney), watched her briefly, took in a brief bit of
Wendy (Sophie Bortolussi) and Marshall's fight, and wandered a bit
more, eventually finding myself in the dressing room for a moment
between Wendy and Andrea (Fania Grigoriou). I started thinking that
perhaps I would take up with Andrea, but when she left the room,
Shawn went with her. Apparently, I was free to follow Wendy after
all.
That idea only stuck briefly, though,
because I was finally presented with what I was hoping for – a
moment that made my decision for me, something so perfectly enticing
that I had no choice but to go along with it, completely divorced
from my over-taxed decision making process. That moment was the
arrival of a flame-haired demonic imp, rising out of the darkness
above the mirror like a horrible, yet beautiful gargoyle. I nearly
let out an evil cackle at the sight. It was the PA (Kirsty Arnold),
a character who was the highlight of my first show, played by an
actress who had made quite the impression on me at the same show, and
somehow I had caught her during that brief period of the loop that I
had missed the first time around. It was perfect. I could do Wendy
on the second loop.
Kirsty's take on the PA is miles apart
from Fania's. Where Fania was aloof and otherworldy, Kirsty was
sassy and mischievous, even playful. At one point, while perfuming
herself, she gave me a puff right in the face. I feel, in the end,
that Fania's version is the more definitive, or appropriate, one –
but I can't deny the sheer fun of watching Kirsty's PA run around the
studio, wreaking havoc on everyone's lives. She just takes so much
pleasure in being evil that it's infectious.
For the most part, the action played
out very similarly both times, as it should, but there was one big
change that threw me for a loop. It was just after the reset,
heading for the 1:1 in the basement. When we arrived, the door was
shut and locked. Very surprising. The PA unlocked it and pulled me
inside, where it was pitch black (also surprising). That's as far as
I'm going to describe it here, but suffice to say, this 1:1 was so
completely and utterly different from what I experienced the first
time that I don't even know if I would call it a repeat.
Afterward, we didn't wind up picking up
any more white masks on the way to her office, so I was the only one
there when the watch made its appearance. I was kind of looking
forward to watching someone else help her out, just to see how they
reacted to things, but that obviously wasn't going to happen. Still,
I'm not going to complain about getting to play assistant a second
time.
The watch procedure was a little
different from the first time. There was less of a performance
aspect to it, with no seeds or chanting. On the other hand, I felt a
little more intimately tied to the process here. Looking back, I
think it's a tremendous example of the effect that positioning and
body language can have on interactions. Fania's PA took me by the
hand and led me upstairs to Studio 4, making me feel like the
assistant to the assistant. Kirsty hooked her arm around mine and
walked up beside me, making me feel more like a co-conspirator. The
whole process also came to an end slightly earlier; instead of having
me hold the watch box through the ice dance, she took it from me as
soon as we closed it up, whispering “Mr. Stanford thanks you for
your assistance” in my ear.
Sometime during the ice dance, we were
joined by a new, but clearly experienced white mask. He showed up
out of the blue, but each time we moved to a new location, he
deposited himself in exactly the right spot to be noticed. I
wouldn't necessarily be bothered by this, normally – someone
watching me might make the same claim – except that, having been
here before, I knew were were but moments from a 1:1 selection, which
meant he was probably there for one reason and one reason only. Sure
enough, when the PA headed for the hallway where she would make her
choice, he was in motion before she was, managed to stop any of the
rest of us from getting too close, and got taken inside.
I was a little disappointed missing out
on this 1:1 a second time, but not tremendously so. It's just the
way things go, and if I was being honest, I had gotten more than my
share already. That said, I was considerably more frustrated about
losing out to that guy, specifically. But what was done was done,
and I tried to put it out of my mind. It was time to make good on my
earlier plan and go find Wendy.
I didn't have to go far – just over
to Studio 2. Wendy and Marshall were just concluding their fight
over the watch. As she headed over to the forest for her tree dance,
I was struck by how different the experience was from the first time
I had seen her do it. The room was packed – incredibly so. It
seemed like there were almost as many people in there as there were
during the finale of the other shows. Thus began a new theme for the
night – for the first time, the audience was affecting my ability
to enjoy the show.
Fortunately, I had a rough idea of
where she would be going throughout the loop, and was able to position
myself for travel so that, barring an incident right after the
Infidelity Ballet, I never actually lost her (In that case, I was
able to reconnect not long after). I have no idea what made this
crowd so different from the other nights – perhaps it was simply
the fact that I was following a main character for the first time.
But some of the things I witnessed, including some girls holding
hands three-across, several clumps of people with masks off
having conversations in the stairwells, and the massive difficulty
the black masks had creating enough space for Wendy and Marshall to
fight in the bedroom suggest to me that there really was something
different about that night.
But enough about the crowds (for now).
How was Sophie's Wendy? In a word, magnificent. Completely
heartbreaking. I nearly lost it again, watching her excitement as
she dressed and got made up for the executive party, thinking that
this would be her chance to show Marshall what she was made of and
win him back (or show him what he's giving up, but the romantic in me votes for the former). The way she danced and skipped down to the basement,
stopping to twirl in each of the spotlights on the way. . . it just
tore me up inside. It was an almost perfect analogue to the most
painfully sad scene of Mulholland Drive, Diane and Camilla's long
walk up the hill to the party – except so much more powerful. I
had seen Wendy's arrival at the party/orgy at least a half-dozen
times already, but I had never seen it from her point of view, never
heard her nearly inhuman shriek of Marshall's name, never noticed the
way she bounded across the room and leapt onto the table where he had
been a moment before like an animal. Everything is different when
you look at it from Wendy's perspective. I caught a glimpse of the
PA and, for the first time, I hated her. I was ashamed of helping
her with the watch.
I've learned an important lesson
here. Main characters are people too.
The rest of the loop pretty much flew
by, although I found myself getting more and more frustrated with the
audience again. By the time we reached the birthday party, it was
impossible to even see inside the tent. I eventually retreated to
the stage, positioning myself to catch Wendy on the way out, and from
there, I managed to see about half of the small stage inside the
tent. This also put me in a prime position for that terrifying
moment when the Doctor (Tomislav English) catches her on her way out. For some reason, in my mind, this scene takes place in a thunderstorm, although that's clearly impossible. Go figure. This was the first time (first show, anyway – he took part in my
1:1 earlier in the evening) I had seen a Doctor other than Francois
Testory, and it definitely felt strange. I didn't see enough of him
to get a strong feel for his interpretation, but he's certainly much
less intimidating.
As we left the Doctor's office, we
passed Studio 5, where Bulldog was just about to start. I did a
quick mental calculation – Wendy was most likely heading down for
the watch fight, which meant I had completed the loop. Probably. If
I was right. But by now, you all know how I am about Bulldog.
First, however – a moment of panic.
As I watched Wendy leave, my eye was drawn to Romola's shrine at the
end of the hall. A shrine with an unfamiliar photo above it. I
rushed over – whoever this photo represented, it wasn't Sonya. Had
the cast list been wrong? Could I have done a full loop with a
completely new (to me) Romola after all? I immediately started
trying to calculate where she would be, so that I could track her
down for the remaining half-loop. Once I reached the shrine, though,
I saw that there were actually two photos above the shrine. I pulled
off the unfamiliar woman's face to find Sonya's photo. It was then
that I realized where I had seen the mystery photo before – it was
one of the ones that Alice and Claude looked at in the secretary's
office. Someone must have taken it and hung it up over Romola for
some reason.
Stupid Tuesday audience will be the
death of me. I swear.
One thing that episode did accomplish
was to remind me of just how little time was left – only a half
hour or so. I couldn't believe it, the night had slipped out from
under me when I wasn't looking. How had I been in there for two and
a half hours already?
This is the point where I did something
bad. I was so frustrated with the crowd, so keenly aware of the time
slipping away from me, so afraid that the whole thing might end on a
sour note, that I committed the cardinal sin of Punchdrunk shows: I
retreated into the familiar. I went back to something I knew would
end well, that would guarantee that I left my final show on a high
note. Can you guess what I did?
I watched the back half of Faye's
(Katie Lusby) loop again. And you know, it was great. It was
basically the same as the night before (except without tears, on my
part). Watching Faye and Harry excitedly rush down to the finale
warmed my heart just as before. Considered in a vacuum, it was a
wonderful way to end my six shows journey.
But.
There is so much more I could have
seen. I could have headed back to town and followed Miguel, or Andy
(actually, I did see a lot of Miguel in Faye's loop. But still). I
could have taken another stab at the Doctor or the Seamstress, or
tried to get a better handle on the Dust Witch. I could have
followed Frankie down to the initiation and then picked up Claude for
a while. Or, hell, I could have just stuck with Frankie. I could
have hung out with the Barman. But I didn't. So much still to see,
and I watched essentially the same character for the third time. I
hang my head in shame.
After the show, I spoke briefly with
Sophie again in the bar, and she confirmed that I had left her loop at the correct point, as well as made mention of the fact that I did
the first loop with the PA. See? I told you they know everything.
It's spooky.
I want to reiterate that, other than my
extreme frustration with the crowd, particularly during my Wendy
loop, and my initial bout of analysis paralysis, I enjoyed every minute of the final show. And I'm only really
bothered by my final choice in retrospect, thinking of all the missed
opportunities. Still, it seems I've managed to end this chronicle on
a bit of a down note, so let's see what I can do about that. I've heard it
said that no story is inherently happy or sad; it's just a matter of
when you end it. If we extend the timeline a bit, what do we find?
Redemption (hopefully). As I write
this, I am just over a week away from making my triumphant return to
Temple Studios for another concentrated, intense, six-show
experience. This will be my chance to get to know all of those
characters that I only glimpsed the first time around, not to mention
a few who didn't even exist back in September (hello, Phoebe and Mr.
Tuttle!). Who knows, maybe I'll even be able to make myself spend
some time in Studio 3.
Eh, let's not go overboard.
So thanks for reading, and if you've
enjoyed it, stay tuned for a whole new batch of adventures come
January, same Stanford-time, same Stanford-channel.
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