The singer, an ebullient African-American woman in period dress, came to the table, said we’d best hurry along-drinks couldn’t go inside. Everything flat black and a little cobwebby and like you’d stepped into a time machine and emerged in Chicago, 1932, a speakeasy. A little jazz quartet was swinging away-good musicians, too-and we found a table, not difficult as the rest of the audience seemed to be leaving. We emerged into a barroom, or, once again, “barroom,” a set, but with a real bar, where we were served a real drink each and given a real bill for $27.00. Young actors playing the roles of opprobrius hotel people, with more and less intimidating effect, some imperturbable as Beefeaters, others more gracious, small roles for amounted to a chorus. Our tickets were taken by a man in livery and we were shushed at each turn in the hallway and each landing on several flights of stars, eyed at each set of black curtains by more actors. “It’s your lucky night,” a film noir hostess said to me. At the front desk (or “front desk,” a prop), there was some muttering about our tardiness, but we were given our tickets and directed to another door. We were given no playbill or papers at all, nothing to go on but what we’d heard, and I’d limited my research so as to be open to surprise if not confusion. The coat-check people were friendly but from another era, maybe the thirties. The hallway in front of us was long and as flat black as the face of the building. A nattily dressed and fake-ish hotelman eyed us, said, “You’re not too late. “The Hotel McKittrick?” Behind him the doors opened. We asked the men where the MacBeth performance was, if they knew where it might be.
But that doorway-there was a ten-foot star above it, nothing flashy, flat-black as the building in fact, was clearly a clue, the first in an evening of clues and little resolution.
We were a little late, leapt out of the cab on 10th Avenue, nothing to see on West 27 th street toward the river but a couple of closed galleries north and a wall of blank warehouse faces south, pair of huge men hanging out a little ominously under a bare bulb down there. What Bloody Man is That? (a review of “Sleep no More”) categories: Cocktail Hour / Reading Under the Influence Comments Off on What Bloody Man is That? (a review of “Sleep no More”)
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