Place as Person. The McKittrick hotel and you
One of the most difficult steps for a production like SNM is to move the observer mentally into another world. The watcher needs to feel like the space they are in require a different set of rules then the outside world, and the production needs to do this while saying as little as possible: the more they say the more the audience feels that they are simply suspending disbelief, rather than actively buying into the new experience. The McKittrick is the silent usher, it's decor and atmosphere prepare you for the time period and look of the characters, while it's dark overtones unsettle you just enough to get you to act first and think second.
The layout of the Mckittrick is a combination of infernal and natural elements. The first thing you are privy to is a dark foreboding hallway. It's unadorned and simple, embryonic like the sounds of an orchestra tuning up at the beginning of a concert. Then you find yourself at the bar. Here for the first and only time the dark recedes and the room is dominated by red and orange. This is the "womb" of the Mckittrick. Designed as a safe space and a the spot of a second birth into the new space. Here the period design is less creepy, and more quaint. The characters are few, and they speak with cooky, fast talker accents. The Mckittrick here is your mother: it has given you a place to reside which is safe and enjoyable, but also silently beckons you further into the harsher but more rewarding experience that awaits you outside of the nest, and behind the mask.
Up until now the experience has been communal. If you entered with a group, or were just one of the masses who clamored into the building, you have been moving with a bunch of other people and gotten a further sense of safety from them. But on the elevator that sense of safety ends. The elevator man divides you, and the McKittrick who up until now has sheltered and invited turns on you. The atmosphere is oppressively dark almost throughout, music or sound effects of nature rings through the halls at a tempo that is just slow enough to unnerve, the hotel whispers from the shadows of the next room that it is full of dangers... and secrets. SNM is divided into 6 floors of the McKittrick. The sixth is by far the most secretive, and the building makes you work to find it, in a way the 6th floor is like the building's 1 one 1, the buildings reward, if you hunt around enough you may find one of the two staircases that lead to it, in the same way that if you take an interest in one particular actor they may reward you.
The fifth floor is dominated by the sanitarium and woods. This particular part is one of the McKittriks least Macbethy area, and is more associated with the Hitchcock feel of the hotel. It is lady Macbeth and the witches who bring the area into play and involve it with the main plot of the story. As you go down you move away from the Hitchcock elements and towards the Macbeth ones. The 4th floor has the taxidermists and the candy shop, much more Hitchcock then Macbeth. The 3rd floor has the graveyard, sort of a neutral ground between the two influences, and the bathtub area, which would mark the beginning of Macbeth's castle. The second floor is the hotel lobby, and is almost purely Macbeth in it's feel, though some more Hitchcock type scenes play out here, such as the Rosemarie's Baby scene shared between Hectate and Lady Macduff. Finally the bottom floor of SNM is the ballroom, which being the most visited floor is a lot more embryonic then it's compatriots: you could just as easily place it into Macbeth as you could in Hitchcock, and just as easily place it in the modern day as you could in the 15th century.
Throughout the experience the McKittrick serves as a kind of director for you, the actor. The amount of space available in the nooks and crannies the actors retreat to is going to dictate the number of people who can go that direction. In this way the McKittrick helps ensure that most people will get some idea of who the main characters are, and what the primary plot is. This is not to say that SNM doesn't want you to make a story for yourself, they certainly do, that is only to say that the McKittrick wants to make you feel special, or against the grain when you are one of the 3 people following Hectate instead of Macbeth. It also wants to give you an idea which puzzle pieces are bigger then others.
The hotel also reminded me a lot of the Shining. The hotel in the Shining much like the McKittrick is a part of the super natural rather then just being the back drop for it. Though the two hotels achieve this by very different techniques: The hotel in the Shining really comes alive in a few scenes, it shows you that it is inherently evil upon itself. The McKittrick meanwhile achieves a subtle sense of purpose and person simply by allowing you to be in spaces... alone. Something about standing in a room by yourself in the McKittrick really drives home just how much a character the place is, after all if you can stand in a room where a scene isn't happening and still be in this other world, then clearly something is happening, it's just between you and the hotel, rather then between you and a dancer.
Well anyway that's the McKittrick, but why am I telling you? You know all this. After all, you've always been here
