In ‘Life and Trust,’ the Details Are in the Devil

What’s the going rate for a soul these days? A little more than $200 on weekends, less on weekdays, handling fees included.

That’s the ticket price for “Life and Trust,” the new show from Emursive, the producers of “Sleep No More,” and arguably an even more ambitious undertaking. A version of the Faust legend (well, several braided versions of the Faust legend), “Life and Trust,” which opens Aug. 1, occupies 100,000 square feet over six floors of a financial district skyscraper in New York that was once the home of the City Bank-Farmers Trust Company.

In a brief introduction, which is set on the eve of the 1929 stock market crash, a financier makes a deal with the devil: damnation in exchange for the chance to relive his youth. The show then ushers audiences back to 1894, plunging them into a Gilded Age delirium.

“It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to get a canvas of this size,” said Teddy Bergman, the director of “Life and Trust.” “It just keeps going.”

Making this deal with the devil took space. And time. And quite a lot of money. How much money? The producers wouldn’t say, though Jonathan Hochwald, a producer at Emursive, said the final amount was comfortably in the millions.

A company of performers, including Marla Phelan, above left, and Mia DiLena, plays 30 characters in 250 overlapping scenes, which loop twice each evening.