British theatre-company Punchdrunk recently brought their installation performance show Sleep No More to A.R.T in Boston. Adapted from Shakespeare’s Macbeth, this three-hour performance inhabits a three-story school building, featuring 45 uniquely decorated rooms, virtuosic dance-choreography and no words. Oh, and you are free to wander as you please. Sounds like a dream; in reality, it borders on a nightmare.

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We enter the building through the backdoor and step into a red-velvet lounge-bar. In this liminal space, the air is thick with giddy anticipation.

Audience members are forced to wear white masks throughout the entire show. An army of faceless bodies, we are let loose in a dim corridor. For the first five minutes I have trouble finding it. I push open a door to a bleak hospital room that is empty. The next door, a graveyard with crackling gravel, is also empty. Shit.

No one prepares you for how to behave during a ‘performance’ when you cannot find any performers. Walking alone through a scented indoor forest, the fog masking my way, I feel like I am wandering in a horror film. Whatever courage I had has vanished. I fear I will give up.

Finally, a character or two. A man, hunched over, is carrying a huge antique wooden door with a woman perched on top. He swings his heavy load graciously down the hall; the woman swivels and jumps, landing on top of some lockers like an agile tarantula. Their violent dance-duet reveals some contorted love affair. A group of mask-bearing audience members stare in mixed disbelief and amazement. I feel my breath returning.

Suddenly, the characters split apart and the audience is divided. I walk briskly in the heels of the tarantula-lady, with a small cohort of spectators scurry along behind me. We are her entourage. She takes us back through the graveyard and the forest, but this time each room becomes enchanted by her presence—still wrapped in mystery, but less threatening.

Stopping in the hospital room, she picks up a crayon and draws a slow, pained line across the wall. Then, she snaps into a violently spastic dance, throwing herself on the mattress, kicking, and slamming against the wall. Her physicality is the most dynamic thing I have ever seen. Olympic-class gymnast meets Godzilla. In the world of Macbeth, her character must be suffering some serious psychological issues.

So much to discover in so little time. More characters start to appear through the darkness, often sharing an intense moment, then quickly dispersing again. As I watch the characters interact and have private moments together, a story begins to form in my head. They live in a passion-filled and violent world, always stunningly beautiful, with women in sexy velvet-gowns or silky slips, and men in crisp white shirts and tailored jackets, confusingly alike with their cropped hair and chiseled jawbones.

I soon discover a cyclical pattern to the performance, and begin to make more intentional choices. Sometimes I try to follow new characters, but watching a scene for the second time is equally compelling. When I find myself back in the hospital-room, watching the tarantula-lady do her contorted dance, I feel as if I am in a dream, visiting a film-sequence that I have seen a hundred times before. It’s surreal, to say the least.

When the three-hour show reaches an end, I am exhausted. The next day, my body aches as proof of my experience. This was not a dream.

Sleep No More runs through January 3rd at ART in Boston. To find out more:

Tickets >> http://www.americanrepertorytheater.org/events/show/sleep-no-more

Company website >> http://www.punchdrunk.org.uk/