Masquerade
The Phantom of the Opera ended its 35-year Broadway run in 2023, but you can't keep a masked man down for long. The Andrew Lloyd Webber musical—adapted by the composer and Richard Stilgoe from Gaston Leroux's 1910 horror novel, and featuring lyrics mostly by Charles Hart—is already somehow here again, and in a surprising new form: an immersive experience, à la Sleep No More, in which audiences are led en masque through multiple locations in a complex designed to evoke the 19th-century Paris Opera House where soprano Christine Daaé is tutored and stalked by a serial killer who lives in the basement. Six groups of 60 spectators at a time enter at staggered 15-minute intervals; each group gets its own Phantom and Christine, but the other roles are played by one to four actors each; to help sustain the atmosphere, audience members must wear black, white or silver cocktail or formal attire—and, hopefully, comfortable shoes. (Masks are provided for those who do not bring their own.) Don't expect the same old Phantom: This version has been heavily streamlined and rearranged to fit its new form, and material about the Phantom's history has been added. Director Diane Paulus (Pippin), who kick-started the immersive-theater trend with 1999's The Donkey Show, oversees an extremely complicated system of simultaneous performances. The cast includes Hugh Panaro, Jeff Kready, Telly Leung, Nik Walker, Kyle Scatliffe, Clay Singer, Kaley Ann Voorhees, Anna Zavelson, Betsy Morgan, Raymond J....