‘Life and Trust’: the New ‘Sleep No More’ Is a Beautiful, Exhausting Devil
Do not disregard the one line of advice which accompanies a booking to Life and Trust (through Sept. 30) in New York City’s Financial District: “It is encouraged that you and your guest join us in comfortable shoes.” Consider yourself emphatically, triple-underlined warned to follow this to the letter.
Whatever you think of Life and Trust—squarely aimed at fans of Sleep No More and produced, like that show, by the immersive theater specialists Emursive–you will end up with legs and buns of steel, given the flights of stairs you ascend and descend in the bowels of the Financial District’s Conwell Tower over a run time of almost 3 hours. Immersive theater like this should really be its own Olympic event.
Just as with Sleep No More, Life and Trust is a multi-roomed, lushly designed fever dream; an evening of hard-on-the-joints choose your own adventure that is sumptuously conceived and lovely to look at, if—for the visitor—exhaustingly executed and ultimately tiresome.