Faust Goes to Fidi

The producers of Sleep No More are back with the whirlwind immersive-theater project Life and Trust.

- REBECCA ALTER

CONWELL COFFEE HALL opened its doors earlier this year on a narrow, nondescript Fidi street. A giant flag with its logo, a red Devil enjoying a cup of coffee in a letter C'with the slogan "The Taste of Success," stands outside.

The former bank (there's a plaque on the wall sharing the history of banking magnate J. G. Conwell) has been exceptionally maintained and restored, its ornate metalwork and marble columns complemented by rich leather and dark-wood furniture and a sweeping Diego Rivera-style mural. By day, baristas take orders from behind the tellers' counter, and customers can work on their laptops in cozy nooks or read by the light of imitation-vintage brass banker's lamps.

But Conwell Coffee Hall is a front. It's the first set piece in the latest experientialtheater project by Emursive, the production company behind Sleep No More, which has played at the McKittrick Hotel (itself an Emursive fabrication) in Chelsea since 2011. That show, a moody, speakeasy-inspired retelling of Macbeth in a vast, fully explorable multi-floor set, is closing later this year after multiple extensions and 13 years of introducing audiences to immersive theater. "When we started, that word wasn't in the Zeitgeist," Emursive partner and co-producer Jonathan