Bacardi recently produced a 'Sleep no More'-like live experience recreating 1950s Cuba - take an exclusive look inside
I arrived at Bill's Townhouse in New York City at 7 p.m., for the 7:15 p.m show. There were already people ahead of me on the line.
As soon as we got in, we were treated to a cocktail reception where mixologists stirred up signature Havana Club cocktails, including the Havana Café, Airmail and Guava Daiquiri.
I got the Havana Café, and got a Cuban cigar imported from the island to take home with me.
We then went up a staircase into a room that was set up a ship at sail, where we saw how Jose Arechabala arrived on Cuban soil from Spain.
We were divided into groups and handed different colored skeleton keys, which were meant to lead us to a different spirits or characters. But the spirits were veiled, and we had to wake them up — with Havana Club, of course.
Each group experienced a different facet of the Arechabala family's story depending on the characters they were following, similar to Sleep No More.
My group had a green skeleton key, and we followed Ramon Arechabala, who was the one that escaped to America when the revolution broke out.
We got a peek into Ramon's life, including how he met his wife, how their business was seized when the revolutionaries came and how they managed to take his family’s rum recipe with him out of Cuba.
We also witnessed the heartbreaking moment when they realized that exile was the only option left for them.
But it wasn't all tears, the whole performance was also full of live music and dance.
And a lot of shots. We got at least three shots of Havana Club through different parts of the theatrical performance.
It was a super fun experience, brought alive by the cast, crew, and creative team behind Amparo, who apparently all had some sort of a link to Cuba, including director Victoria Collado and playwright Vanessa Garcia.
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