LIFE AND TRUST: Immersed in Faustian FiDi — Review

If Sleep No More, the immersive theatre piece that has been running in Chelsea for over a decade, can attribute its blockbuster success to any one thing, it is probably its sexual cohesion. Pulling from disparate cinematic sources like film noir, Eyes Wide Shut, and David Lynch’s oeuvre and tying them to a loose interpretation of Macbeth, it finds, through eroticism, a hypnotic common ground: brutishness from the first, mystery from the second, surreality from the third, blind bloodlust from the fourth. Macbeth is a simple enough story that, even if half-remembering from high school lit classes, one can follow the thread as each scantily clad performer seduces you from scene to scene. It is, in a word, irresistible.

If Life and Trust, the new venture from those same producers, Punchdrunk and Emursive, lasts as long, it will be because of – or in spite of – its looseness. This new one feels maybe three times as expansive, both in thematic scope and real estate. Taking over a gargantuan building in FiDi, it smartly builds upon the area’s Gilded Age architecture by setting its story on the eve of the Wall Street crash. Frankly, it’s just refreshing to experience something set in the 1920s (an aesthetically lush period) that’s not beholden to the tired flapper aesthetics from The Great Gatsby. The starting point here is a Faustian tale in which a banking tycoon tries to relive his youth, and escape the incoming Great Depression, through a deal with the devil.

…or something. The experience is framed as starting with a private meeting with J.G. Conwell, the bigwig in question, during a financial conference. Once one is ushered into the at-your-own-pace experience, however, it’s anything goes. This is not a bad thing, as the scenic design by Gabriel Hainer Evansohn, is stupendously rich. We seem to follow Conwell back to his Midwestern roots, filled with carnivals at the age when nickelodeon cinemas began taking over the American imagination and the mind-boggling expansion of ambition and possibility that came with it. Performers act out various scenes – all very well, and choreographed by Jeff and Rick Kuperman – but, even with a runtime of just under three hours, one faces the choice of following a performer’s narrative thread, and potentially missing some of the rooms, or exploring each area and losing the plot. The Mephistopheles legend is too loose and variable, not to mention freely applied here, for an experience of this magnitude to be hinged upon.

Still, though director Teddy Bergman has a fantastic grasp on time and place – it often feels like a terrifying look into the mind of Mia Goth’s character in Pearl – and not a strong enough one on cohesive experience, each scene coheres vibewise. But even with its seemingly endless inventiveness – a somewhat ambivalent qualification here – Life and Trust is a marvel of spectacle, and one I suspect will draw return attendants seeking significance and revelry. We are once again, after all, in the freefalling ‘20s.

‍Life and Trust is in performance at 69 Beaver Street in New York City. For tickets and more information, visit here.