Sleep No More to Play its Final Performance in January

Sleep No More will be no more.

The masked, Macbeth-inspired, Bernard Herrmann-soundtracked video game-acid trip-fever dream-off-Broadway sensation will play its final performance on January 28, 2024, nearly 13 years since it opened. It will be the show’s 5,000th performance.

Sleep No More was created by the English theater company Punchdrunk. After runs in London and Brookline, Massacussetts, the commercial production company Emursive brought it to New York City, transforming 100,000 square feet of warehouse space on West 27th Street in Chelsea—previously home to some intense nightlife—into the McKittrick Hotel. The show opened in New York City on March 7, 2011.

According to the New York Times, the decision to close was brought about by rising production costs. Producer Jonathan Hochwald said, “It’s an enormous undertaking with hundreds of employees.”

In a joint statement, Punchdrunk co-creators Felix Barrett and Maxine Doyle said, “We are incredibly proud of the artistic community Sleep No More has nurtured and the many distinct audiences it has loved in New York. Thirteen years ago, we could never have imagined the astonishing journey this show has been on. It’s had an incalculable impact on us all and will live on in our hearts, seep through our skin and sleep in the deepest parts of our imaginations. We are eternally grateful to everyone involved in this production—the team at Emursive, the brilliant casts and crews and of course the creative team who helped create the show in the first place and fed and sustained it throughout the years in New York.”

Since 2011 (with a pandemic-induced interval), Sleep No More’s atmosphere of dark debauchery has attracted more than two million mask-wearing attendees, including a legion of passionate recurring visitors who obsessively shadowed performers, greedily determined to experience its highly coveted 1:1 interactions.

The show’s celebrity guest performers have included Neil Patrick Harris, Dita Von Teese, Leslie Odom, Jr., Evan Rachel Wood and Aaron Paul.

Out, out, not-so-brief candle.