Theater review by Adam Feldman
Ever since the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical The Phantom of the Opera hung up its mask in 2023, after a record 35-year run on Broadway, the show’s ardent admirers (there are packs of them) have been wishing it were somehow here again. And now it is—with an emphasis on somehow. The revisal of Phantom now playing Off Broadway as Masquerade has been significantly revised to fit a very different form: an immersive experience, à la Sleep No More, in which audiences are led en masque through multiple locations in a midtown complex designed to evoke the 19th-century Paris Opera House where soprano Christine Daaé is tutored and stalked by the facially misshapen serial killer who lives in the basement. The very notion of this reimagining—created by Lloyd Webber and director Diane Paulus, from a concept by Randy Weiner—is surprising; perhaps even more surprising is that, somehow, they pull it off.
Masquerade | Photograph: Courtesy Oscar Ouk
The complexity of the enterprise is staggering. Six groups of 60 spectators at a time enter the building at 15-minute intervals; each group gets its own Phantom and Christine, but the other actors repeat their roles multiple times a night. The spectators are guided by the stern ballet mistress Madame Giry through a multitude of discrete playing spaces on floors throughout the complex, including the roof. To help sustain the atmosphere and the sense of event, audience members must wear black, white or silver cocktail or formal attire—and, ideally, comfortable shoes. (Lacy lightweight masks are provided for those who do not bring their own.)
Masquerade | Photograph: Courtesy Matthew Murphy
To some extent, Masquerade is an elaborate exercise in Phan-fic, though a more sensible one than the misbegotten (and best forgotten) POTO sequel Love Never Dies. The Phantom may be a menace—a murderer, a kidnapper, an extortionist, a control freak of a composer—but lovers of this musical have long shipped the romance between him and Christine, while turning up their noses at the sanctioned one between Christine and the viscount Raoul, her handsome and rich childhood friend. (Raoul is like Cosette in Les Miz: too perfect to root for.) To them, the Phantom is not principally the villainous Opera Ghost—or O.G., as he signs his threatening missives to the opera house’s managers—but Erik, a sensitive genius who has been mistreated all his life but whose deepest wish is just to love and be loved in return.
Masquerade | Photograph: Courtesy Oscar Ouk
To the extent that Masquerade departs from Phantom—which was adapted by the composer and Richard Stilgoe from Gaston Leroux's 1910 horror novel, with lyrics mostly by Charles Hart—it is to nudge the material in that direction. Nearly all of the original show’s opera-related material, whether backstage or in rehearsal, has been excised so that the show can focus more intently on the central couple. (Along with it goes the falling chandelier and most of the musical’s comic relief.) And Masquerade’s version of the Phantom is a good deal more sympathetic than the O.G. O.G.
In the show’s most important innovation, the audience witnesses an extended flashback at a carnival sideshow—complete with a fire eater and a human blockhead—where a scared young Erik is kept in a cage and exploited as a freak. (His malformed face is sheathed in a burlap sack.) Other choices in the adaptation soften our impression of him as well. In the original, for example, the Phantom kills a stagehand named Joseph Buquet out of pique; Masquerade smartly adds justification for this by inserting Buquet into Erik’s back story and showing him being cruel to the boy. This adaptation also shows us more of the Phantom’s innovations as an inventor, as demonstrated in a dance sequence between automated replicas of him and Christine.
Masquerade | Photograph: Courtesy Oscar Ouk
The most impressive inventiveness of the night, however, is in its fiendishly complicated system of simultaneous performances. Paulus and Weiner are old hands at immersive theater—they kicked off the modern spate of it with 1999's The Donkey Show—and the plan they have devised for Masquerade is a marvel of coordination. Every night’s cast includes three Raouls, three young Eriks and three Madame Girys, each working two tracks of the musical at once. Each Christine somehow doubles as Madame Giry’s daughter Meg in a different Christine’s timeline. And the lone actors in the Opera House roles must repeat their performances six times a night: managers Andre (Raymond J. Lee) and Firmin (Jeremy Stolle), tenor Piangi (Phumzile Sojola) and diva Carlotta (Satomi Hofmann or Betsy Morgan). But wait, there’s more: Each group of spectators is divided into thirds for an intimate backstage scene late in the show, which means that each of those actors—in an arrangement that seems guaranteed to drive them insane—must repeat that same scene 18 times every night.
Masquerade | Photograph: Courtesy Oscar Ouk
To say the very least: One has to admire the stage management. And one also has to admire the skill of the production’s creative team, which includes James Fluhr (production design), Emilio Sosa (costumes), J.J. Janas (hair and makeup) and Ben Stanton (lighting). The sound design, by Brett Jarvis, is remarkable for what you hear but especially for what you don’t: other voices in other rooms from the five tracks of the show that are running simultaneously elsewhere in the complex, each with its own piped-in music.
These elements will be the same no matter what your entry time. The principal performers will not, though, which makes them hard to review. Masquerade’s six Phantoms are all quite different, including in age—they range from Clay Singer, who can’t be more than 30 years old, to Hugh Panaro, who logged more than 2,000 performances in the role on Broadway—and your experience will somewhat depend on which of them you see. (The other four are Jeff Kready, Telly Leung, Kyle Scatliffe and Nik Walker.) My 8pm cast starred the lanky and emotive Singer alongside the pretty-voiced Riley Noland as Christine, Francisco Javier Gonzalez as Raoul and Tia Karaplis as Mme. Giry; I enjoyed all of their performances.
Masquerade | Photograph: Courtesy Oscar Ouk
In the end, though, it may not matter much which cast you see. Putting the audience closer to the actors does not make a show like Phantom more moving; it only takes some of the grandeur away. And Masquerade’s peripatetic structure inevitably keeps wrenching you out of theatrical illusion: One moment you are in the Phantom’s underground lair, and then you are on an escalator; now you are watching a murder in the opera-house wings, and then you are looking at the office buildings behind Christine and Raoul’s duet. But if you have any affection for Phantom at all, it’s a blast. The main attraction of Masquerade is not its stars, its story or its music of the night; it’s the pleasure of re-exploring a property you already know and seeing it from a new angles. Get dressed up, hide your face and give yourself over to the phantasy.
Masquerade. 218 W 57th St (Off Broadway). Music by Andrew Lloyd Webber. Lyrics by Charles Hart and Richard Stilgoe. Book by Stilgoe and Lloyd Webber. Directed by Diane Paulus. With rotating cast. Running time: 2hrs 5mins. No intermission.
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Masquerade | Photograph: Courtesy Oscar Ouk
