Review: Life and Trust Aims to Be the Next Big Immersive Hit After Sleep No More

Sleep No More, the hit immersive retelling of Macbeth, may be closing in September after a dozen or so years at the McKittrick Hotel, but its production company, Emursive, already has a potential successor lined up at the newly christened Conwell Tower in the Financial District. Life and Trust describes itself as “a tale of money, sex, and power” that “offers a rare opportunity to discover the value — and the cost — of cherished dreams and desires.” To this viewer, who has seen many attempts to replicate Sleep No More‘s runaway success, this new show at the very least offers an opportunity to reflect on both the allure and limitations of this kind of immersive spectacle.

Unlike Sleep No More, which had the Shakespeare classic to lend coherence to its feverish set pieces, Life and Trust, written by journalist and author Jon Ronson, is a sprawling mosaic tied together by the legend of Faust. Instead of drawing from one literary source, Ronson appears to have been inspired by a bunch of them, ranging from Goethe’s and Marlowe’s Faust plays to Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray and Powell & Pressburger’s ballet film The Red Shoes — all works that deal with the idea of the Faustian bargain, i.e. selling one’s soul to the Devil for success.

Setting the show in the former headquarters of the financial company that would later become Citigroup has also inspired Ronson to draw on history. Beginning on the eve of the Stock Market Crash of 1929 before flashing back to the Gilded Age, Life and Trust features a large cast of characters both fictional and nonfictional. J.G. Conwell, the CEO of the Life and Trust bank, is imaginary, as are Mephisto and Gretchen, both reimagined from the Faust legend. But society icon Evelyn Nesbit and architect Stanford White are both real, and many other characters are likely inspired by real people.

None of that really matters when it comes to the actual experience of Life and Trust, though, given how little dialogue there is. Instead, movement and choreography dominate, with many of the show’s 40 performers exhibiting amazing litheness as they perform in close quarters with masked audience members and run up and down the Conwell Tower stairs. (Many of the roles have been double-cast, so the cast varies by performance.) Jeff and Rick Kuperman are credited as the show’s main choreographers; one of the set pieces, a boxing match, recalls their Tony-winning fight choreography in The Outsiders, slow motion and all.

The stylized movement, though, does little to further the narrative, such as it is. From what I could gather from my sole experience with the show, Conwell appears to have made his fortune through the popularity of a liquid opiate that has hooked some of the other characters, including his sister, who’s carrying on an affair with the housemaid, among others. One may also come across some of the scientists possibly involved in creating the drug, who may also have more nefarious eugenics-oriented plans. There are also references to vaudeville and early motion pictures, with one of the performers doing a silent clown routine for those who happen upon the theater in the middle of one of the floors.

Would it even be worth returning just to sort out the plot? At the risk of sounding like an aesthetic reactionary, Life and Trust mostly just reminded me that when it comes to true immersion in a work of art, there’s still something to be said for what brilliant writing, acting, staging, and directing on a conventional proscenium can do to pull you into observing and contemplating human experiences and ideas outside your own. By comparison, both this show and Sleep No More are mere carnival attractions, so overloaded with flop-sweat spectacle that they end up pushing us away psychologically and emotionally even as the performers come close to us physically.

By most objective measures, though, this is an astonishingly well-executed show. Gabriel Hainer Evansohn, credited with the show’s insanely detailed experience and scenic design, has bathed Conwell Tower in an atmosphere in which you can feel the hellish rot in your bones. Jeanette Yew’s chiaroscuro lighting design; Taylor Bense and Owen Bolton’s music; and Brendan Aanes, Michael Kiley, and Nick Kourtides’s sound design further those forbidding sensations. And under the direction of Teddy Bergman, the large ensemble’s full-bodied commitment throughout the show’s three hours is surely impressive, all the way to its big-blowout finish.

Life and Trust will certainly give you your money’s worth in spectacle, and it’s mind-boggling how much work has clearly gone into it. But for a show about selling one’s soul for success, the experience ultimately comes off as soulless.