Life And Trust has turned into an unexpected passion of mine.
I love the show for one key reason—Life And Trust NYC is prose, whereas its unofficial predecessor, Sleep No More NYC, was poetry.
I coined this description in the early days of the show while sounding off with my opinions on the Life And Trust Discord server.
It’s a sincere description intended to flatter the show. Poetry evokes raw imagery and visceral emotions. Prose crafts complex narratives and rich characters.
In Life And Trust NYC, I appreciate the immersive theater experience that leans into the telling of stories with characters struggling with one central theme—the Faustian bargain.
“Banking Is In Our Blood”
The prose of Life And Trust NYC starts as soon as we enter Conwell Tower.
We’re greeted by a pair of check-in podiums lit by banker lamps in a dark hallway. From there, we move on to coat-and-bag check before entering “Teller Hall,” the after-hours incarnation of Conwell Coffee Hall. The journey from point to point leads you down a series of winding hallways lit with track lighting and decorated with posters advertising Life and Trust Bank.
Banking is in our blood, some of the ads promise.
Trust us with your life, others request.
As we wind our way closer to Teller Hall, the advertisements grow older in style, simulating a travel back in time—specifically to Wednesday, 23 October 1929.
It’s from Teller Hall that we eventually move deeper into the recesses of Life and Trust Bank; this is for an investor meeting with the bank’s founder, J.G. Conwell. While waiting for Mr. Conwell in a mahogany antechamber, a radio announcement plays. The stock market is crashing. Wall Street is free falling. As the radio plays, the room grows dim. The chandelier above glows an eerie green.
The radio announcement ends with a seizure-inducing flash, and a figure appears.
Happier Times
The mysterious figure explains that our meeting with Mr. Conwell is cancelled. The stock market has crashed, our money is no longer worth the paper it’s printed on, and Mr. Conwell has fled back to a… “happier time.”
The figure moves us into Mr. Conwell’s main office.
The space is in disarray. A bottle of green liquid is overturned. A document smeared with blood is strewn on the desk. A dagger lays next to it.
The figure is one of three characters—Valdes, Megaera, or Daeva. These individuals are some of the Lilliths, and they’ve been watching J.G. Conwell for decades—ever since the Lilliths’ true employer gave him a recipe in his youth—a recipe to cure all worldly pain.
Lore Dump
The true employer of the Lilliths is the Great Mephisto—the Devil in disguise as a decadent magician and carnival illusionist.
And the recipe to cure all worldly desire? It’s instructions for brewing Conwell’s Cough Syrup, a green succor alchemically distilled from poppies. Mephisto sold this recipe to a young and naive Conwell in exchange for his soul—“10,000 hells” to be exact.
Conwell’s intentions were pure enough. He made the deal to ease the pain of his sister, Naima Conwell. It worked. After Naima sampled J.G.’s first batch of syrup, he asked her how she felt.
“Divine,” Naima Conwell said.
The fortune Conwell amassed from producing Conwell’s Cough Syrup gave him the capital needed to found the Life and Trust Bank—an institution now damned by dark forces and financial catastrophe alike.
And so, Conwell forged a new pact with the Great Mephisto and his Lillith demons.
They give him the opportunity to escape back in time to his glory days of 1894… for a price. Conwell extends his contract with his demonic patrons for another 10,000 hells—all to find solace in happier days.
We are invited to travel back in time with him—to observe Conwell’s decisions and those influenced by them.
It’s a big lore dump. A bit convoluted, too. The setup of Life And Trust NYC was far cleaner and more theatrical prior to structural changes made at the end of January 2025.
But I’ll explain those in a later piece.
Poetry And Prose
Darkness abounds and adventure awaits upon entering the Life And Trust show space.
This is the greatest distinction between Life And Trust NYC and Sleep No More NYC.
Sleep No More NYC was an immersive theater experience you can wade in, like a great and dreamy lake of surrealism. There were many beautiful characters to follow throughout the Punchdrunk show.
But I never viewed Sleep No More NYC as a narrative-driven experience full of character development. It was wholly experiential. Many times I simply drifted through the McKittrick Hotel’s hallways, soaking up the ambiance, and left perfectly content.
Hence, the poetry of Sleep No More NYC.
That’s not the best way to experience Life And Trust NYC.
If Sleep No More NYC was a poetic lake of surrealism, then Life And Trust NYC is a collection of many narrative tributaries all interlacing with one another. We as audience members are phantoms invited to follow Conwell’s journey into the past.
But once we are there, we have 24 ghosts from Conwell’s past to explore and understand. They all have rich stories to tell through narrative dance and movement performances. Nearly all of these individuals are struggling with their own Faustian pacts.
The highs and lows of American exceptionalism are on full display in Life And Trust NYC, and exploring all of the rich narratives telling this story is like walking through the pages of a living novel. Every one of the ghosts haunting the halls of the Life and Trust Bank is their own rewarding experience.
Hence, the prose of Life And Trust NYC.
A Dark Adventure
At the time of this writing, I’ve been to Life And Trust NYC 14 times in seven months.
I visited Sleep No More NYC 16 times over 12 years. Even in the McKittrick’s final weeks, I opted to see Life And Trust instead.
Adventure—it’s another good word to describe Emursive’s original show. Because a visit to Life And Trust NYC is a dark adventure into a hell of J.G. Conwell’s making.
There have been many times throughout my own life where I’ve wondered what would drive me to make my own Faustian bargain. I like to think I’d make the right decision. But these deals often show themselves at our lowest moments and not our highest. So who knows?
Life And Trust NYC allows us to understand this predicament. What are the situations and scenarios leading to a deal with the Devil? Is anyone strong enough to turn away from the temptation and rise above?
What’s really worth 10,000 hells?
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Tickets for Life And Trust NYC are on sale now.
Some images used in this essay are modified screenshots from the Life And Trust NYC promotional trailer found on YouTube.
Other images were found on various websites and are credited to photographers Stephanie Crousillat and Jane Kratochvil.
This review contains affiliate links.
