Review: Choose Your Own Deal With the Devil at the Theater

The show Life And Trust is an immersive performance that unfolds over three hours across six floors inside what was once a Wall Street office building.

Few theatrical performances come with a warning about wearing comfortable shoes. But not many live shows are quite like Life And Trust. This wildly ambitious immersive performance unfolds over three hours across six floors inside what was once a Wall Street office building. It features dozens of characters and more than 200 scenes—but don't expect to see them all.

The main narrative is a retelling of Faust set on the eve of the 1929 stock market crash: An aging financier who made a literal deal with the devil in his youth discovers that the contract is being called in. But the capacious and sprawling show contains multiple stories: Characters and references from other deal-with-the-devil tales, including Hans Christian Andersen's "The Red Shoes" and Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray,also appear.

You see what you choose to: Wander freely through the space, or follow a particular character through his or her scenes (hence the need for comfy shoes). Turn a corner and you'll pass from a full-fledged carnival into a perfect replica of a 1920s movie house. Down a set of stairs, you might find a small-town Main Street, an Irish pub, a secret society's meeting place, or even the bowels of hell. It is a dreamlike experience. Go with friends, but split up and compare your recollections over drinks afterward.

On an obvious level, Life And Trust is meant as a critique of capitalism: Money cannot save the pitiable characters and all that. But the show's very existence proves the market's satisfying creativity by repurposing an empty office building in lower Manhattan—and by luring patrons back on the promise that repeat viewings will be rewarded with wholly different narratives to explore.