My Morning With 'Sleep No More' Superfans

Around 11:30 a.m. last Monday, I walked up to the heavy wooden doors of 530 West 27th Street, which for more than a decade had been known as the fictional 1930s-era McKittrick Hotel. At noon, these gates would open for a sale of costumes from "Sleep No More," the mesmerizing, 100,000-square-foot immersive theater show based on "Macbeth," which closed in mid-January after almost 14 years and over 5,000 performances.

The self-described superfans of "Sleep No More," people who went dozens or hundreds of times, liked to line up at least an hour before the doors opened. I figured they’d do the same for a chance to take home a piece of the show, so I was surprised to turn the corner off 10th Avenue and see only a dozen people. Was it the cold? 

"I think it's just that it's a weekday, and a lot of people couldn't get off work," Andrew Bacha, the first person on line, told me. Bacha, a photographer, didn’t find out about the show until 2023, but he went 20 times after his first visit hooked him. "Stepping off the elevator into this mysterious hospital and then letting each floor unfold to me was just one of the most magical experiences of my life," he said.