Secretive off-Broadway Phantom of the Opera riff…
Theater review
MASQUERADE
Two hours with no intermission. Through Feb. 1 at Lee’s Art Shop, 218 W. 57th Street.
When “The Phantom of the Opera” closed on Broadway in 2023 after a mirror-shattering 35-year run, everyone figured it will ultimately come back.
Nobody, however, foresaw that the return of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical to New York would take up an complete division store and require comfy footwear.
But, as soprano Christine Daae says, “Things have changed, Raoul.”
That’s “Masquerade,” the hot-ticket, magical, immersive spin on the show that opened Monday night time off-Broadway at that previous hallowed corridor of theater, Lee’s Art Shop on 57th Street.
Directed by Diane Paulus, it’s “Sleep No More” meets “The Music of the Night.” You journey from the basement to an open-air rooftop — all of which has been transformationally and gorgeously designed and adorned.
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The chandelier still falls and the gondola glides through the mist. I had large phun.
The approach the dream-like expertise works is 60 people enter at each of six performances a night time dressed in black, silver and white. If you’ve seen “Ratatouille,” you already know what colour the critics wore. Everybody also has to don a masks.
Lacey face coverings are supplied. But lots of people introduced their own from home, which begged some questions.
Sixty audiences per efficiency get pleasure from the immersive “Phantom of the Opera” take called “Masquerade.” Oscar Ouk
Of course, twelve straight hours of poperatic singing is next to inconceivable. So, there may be a sextet of proficient Phantoms and Christines, and various numbers of Raouls, Madame Girys and other roles appearing out a tantalizing Tetris.
I noticed Jeff Kready as the opera ghost and Anna Zavelson as diva Daae, both of whom sing at a Broadway caliber just a couple ft from your face.
The orchestra sadly is canned — logistically that’s the only option — but at least the overture is performed live by a devilishly good violinist, who lurks around throughout.
The viewers goes through a dizzying array of rooms. Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman
Where “Masquerade” is not like the now-shuttered “Sleep No More” at the McKittrick Hotel is that patrons don’t dart off wherever they’d like to go — be it the Phantom’s boudoir or the fly loft of the Opera Populaire.
You’re guided through a dizzying array of rooms, often with a glass of Champagne. And exterior of the opener at the New Year’s Eve ball and the plummeting of a sure well-known mild fixture, the relaxation of the efficiency unfolds in the ordinary order.
Most pleasurable — and leaping off Charles Hart and Richard Stilgoe’s lyric “and in this labyrinth where night is blind” — is that wading through the luxurious 1881 Parisian maze is completely disorienting.
It’s like attempting to discover the exit of the world’s sexiest Whole Foods.
When a blast of contemporary air hit me as our group walked out under the stars for the love duet “All I Ask of You,” I had no thought we have been already at the very top of the building.
The show takes place from the basement to the roof of Lee’s Art Shop. Rosario Arcuri for MASQUERADE
Traveling such a huge distance requires hopping on escalators, which do, for a second, yank you out of nineteenth Century France and back into a building where you may once buy paint brushes.
A few good, suave additions raise “Masquerade” to one thing far better than a jolly vacationer attraction. Paulus, when she’s firing on all cylinders, is aware of how to fuse the industrial with the profound.
At one level, we’re whisked into a circus dungeon to witness the origins of the Phantom, called Eric, as a frightened boy in a circus freak show.
The three-ring go to isn’t all a downer. One performer places a nail through her nostril. Another swallows fire. There are pictures.
Later, poor Eric returns in the show’s remaining seconds in a good transfer involving our masks that’s strikingly stunning. The impressed thought takes the “Masquerade” lyric “hide your face so the world can never find you” and wrings contemporary new tears from it.
“Masquerade” options six different Phantoms and Christines. Oscar Ouk
This complete revitalized gothic romance with its Eighties guitar riffs has that invigorating impact.
“The Phantom of the Opera” could have vanished from the Majestic Theatre, but there’s lots of majesty to be discovered on 57th Street.
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