Alek Wek & Gemma Ward for the Porter Edit March 2019 ''The Relevance''
Photographer Claudia Knoepfel
Fashion Editor Stylist Helen Broadfoot
Newest Cool
I've been keeping a list of TV shows I mean to watch based off of the way people I follow post about them but haven't gotten around to yet, and the list is too long to fit into one poll. So to help me choose what to watch next, I'm gonna make two polls and then when they're done, have the winners face off in another poll
Hello? Is anyone there? I honestly don't know. I haven't written here in so long I'm not sure I even remember how, but it's December 31, 2024 and a new year is about to begin and with that new beginning comes a great loss. There are 6 performances left of Sleep No More and my emotions are heavy as we welcome 2025.
I attended the show last night surrounded by old friends and new. It was my last time arriving to the hotel alone. A show filled with strange crowds, loud talkers, overcrowding, and yet a show of pure magic none the less. But I'm not here to talk about last night, I'm here for the Porter.
From 2012-2014 the McKittrick was my home. I was frequently at Sleep No More, but also young and broke in NY I was often in the building for other things. Hopping into the Manderley after the show ended to see a band, in the Club Car for a special concert. Up at Gallow Green for one drink and several hours of sitting around. Any chance to be close to Sleep No More even when I couldn't afford the show itself, I took it.
Then I took a break. I'd found love and the gap that Sleep No More had filled in my heart no longer felt so vast. I didn't need the show in the same visceral way I once did. My partner and I attended many parties at the McKittrick over the years, but the memories of the frantic, emotionally fraught, time from 2012-2014 began to fade. (To be fair there was a lot of alcohol back then).
I slowly started going back to the show a couple years ago and in early 2024 I followed a Porter I hadn't seen before, Andrew Pastides, and that show began (as my friend Anna has coined it) my "Sleep No More Renaissance".
It is impossible for me to choose a clear favorite character in that building, but it is fair to say the Porter has always held my heart. From my first Porter 1:1 with Zach McNally, to the incomparable Will Seefried, to playing the Porter myself in college at Bryn Mawr, I will always follow the Porter.
Like many of the "older" fans, my history with Sleep No More is forever tied to moments of the past. The faces I used to see time and time again, those performances and choices that were made in the early days that will live in my dreams forever, which is why I must thank Andrew as we approach the end. Andrew Pastides' Porter re-captured my soul that night. The chills, the heartache, the desire, it all came flooding back.
Andrew's Porter was heart wrenchingly perfect. I hadn't felt that kind of pain and desperation in the hotel in so many years, it was a revelation. I wish I had written about it more then. I wish the memories didn't fade so quickly, but I will never forget the feeling of his hands on my shoulders as we watched Macbeth hang.
We may be about to walk out of the Manderley for the last time, but the Porter remains. The Porter will never escape the loop. He will be there in devastating heartbreak for eternity. So I pray you, remember the porter.
the child of a traitorous thane; musings on sleep no more's porter
SON He has killed me, mother.
Run away, I pray you!
[Dies.]
— Macbeth, Act IV. 2
There is a certain beauty to the Porter's character in Sleep No More — for he exists only in the transitional space of the Lobby, a minion of Hecate meant to set up the important scenes through which the looping tragedy of Macbeth will continue to flow. Without him, Banquo is not given the letter holding his prophecy, Malcolm never learns of the falcon shot down, the prophecy cannot take place.
The Porter is loop-aware — there is a consistent deterioration in the character as the show goes on, everything becoming harder and harder for him to deal with. Throughout setting up the scene for the next magical cycle, he is well aware what his actions lead to. It is why he tries to stall Agnes from going upstairs, to where he knows she will be put through the harrowing ordeal of tear collection by Hecate. He tries to keep her safe, failing each time.
Another party that he desperately (moreso than with Agnes) tries to keep safe is Lady Macduff, the innocent murdered for sins not hers in any manner. This is the most intrusive we see the Porter — as he tries to bat off Danvers and her poisonous milk, milk he knows will render Lady Macduff incredibly vulnerable and thus easier to kill.
In Shakespeare's Macbeth, the chief character who attempts a similar, desperate protection of the Lady and who too fails is the Lady's young son. Stabbed to death by the Murderers, her son cries to his mother — begging for her to run away, abandoning him in his last minutes as to save herself from a similar fate. Reversing the traditional parent-to-child protection, the kind we see with Banquo and Fleance when they are attacked, here, the child must be the protector.
Every loop, our Porter fights off Danvers and loses, watching Lady Macduff grow weaker in the aftermath of drinking the accursed milk. He then hears her death, tortured by its violent sounds as he hides in the lost luggage space, desperately trying to distract himself. Then, everything resets again, actions supplemented by his own hands and he continues to live this harrowing loop again and again and again. Why?
In my eyes, our Porter is not only Hecate's lost child in the forest but also the lost son of the Macduff's. The child doomed to protect his mother. After all, Fife is a wooded area.
The Porter is actively putting himself through the loops, losing himself to the inertia of Hecate's endless time magic, out of a deep, child-like hope that this time, he will be able to set things aright. Maybe, it will be this loop, just one more each time, that he will be able to protect his mother from the brutal fate she suffers. Just one more try. Hope keeps him centred as he hands away the note for Lady Macbeth to Danvers, moping in the phonebooth, knowing it will restart his suffering.
There is more substance in the performance to support the Macduff Child theory —
When Lady Macduff is murdered, something he is intimately aware of and scared by, the Porter hides himself into the Lost Luggage. He leans into childish methods of comfort, making paper boats and busying themselves playing with it, even if the boat is made of a tearful letter to his tormentor that he knows will be ignored. Some Porters even tear up at the noises, cowering closer to the counter.
The Porter only emerges from Lost Luggage when not only the murderer Macbeth but Macduff too is gone. In Macbeth, the only conversation we see between Lady Macduff and her son concerns her worriation that her husband is a traitor — abandoning her and her children in a place which he himself finds too dangerous to stay in.
There is little affection lost for Macduff on the end of the Porter. He waits for him to be gone, only willing to put himself through the torment if it is to comfort his mother, to give her her coat. His traitorous father, gone again to protect the son of another.
Lady Macduff's messes are cleaned up with a gentleness the Porter shows little of to the other residents (bar Boy who he is in love with) who pass like storms through the Lobby. As he collects her strewn clothes, the Porter dons them with a childish glee, resembling more than ever a child rifling through their mother's cupboard, finding something that makes them feel beautiful. The clothes are collected carefully and packed away, her coat is kept safely hooked. Her presence in the lobby, even through just her abandoned possessions, is looked after gently.
You can never know the true story behind the residents of The McKittrick — for those are secrets they keep close to their hearts, lost in their chosen silence. But, this personal retelling of the Porter's story as I understood it is one I can share easily and so I do. My poor Porter, my poor poor Porter.
