‘Masquerade’ doesn’t improve ‘Phantom’ with immersion

“And in this labyrinth where night is blind,” Christine famously sings, “The Phantom of the Opera is here, inside my mind.” For decades, he’s been in people’s wallets, too.

The masked warbler anywhere and everywhere in “Masquerade,” the rather startling new interactive version of arguably the most successful musical in living history, often appearing just a couple of feet from the paying sycophants, all wandering around with eyes wide open.

And if there’s a psychological maze inside Christine’s skull, there’s also one inside a former art supply store on W. 57th St., where you are led on a winding journey from room to room, up and down, even out on the roof where you can hear Raoul (Paul Adam Schaefer, et al.) emoting “All I Ask of You.”

“Masquerade,” simply put, is an authorized, interactive version of “Phantom,” wherein audiences of around 100 enter at roughly 15-minute intervals and are led through the building where different scenes from the famed musical play out around them. The experience is a mix of standing and seated experiences (you typically spend 10 or 15 minutes in each room) and is closest in style to “Sleep No More,” the famed take on “Macbeth” that ran downtown for years. Guides show you which way to go. A good thing, since it’s dark.

I’ll say one thing for “Masquerade”: The creative leadership team of Andrew Lloyd Webber, Randy Weiner and Diane Paulus have forged an entirely analog experience from their $25 million investment, with nary a video screen in the place. As such it honors the Broadway tradition of “Phantom.” Seeing that production again, after a break of a couple of years, on its closing night in 2023, I remember gawking up at the stage and thinking, wow, they built an entire city up there.

So good for the creative team here that they did not take the easier digital-immersive route. When the chandelier crashes, albeit not far to the floor, given the limitations of the space, the glass still rattles. I’ll always have Las Vegas, where the chandelier fell so fast in the casino version of “Phantom” that half the orchestra ran for their lives. But “Masquerade” has the sparklier crystals.

Depending on your preexisting view of this material and how upclose and personal you like to get with your fellow “Phantom” fans, “Masquerade” likely will feel either spectacularly intimate or horrifically so. One is led in small groups with timed entries through various rooms where shards of the story come together in a show where the multicast logistics must be a total nightmare.

Everyone on the night I was there clearly knew the story, which was just as well, since it has been sliced, diced and partially reassembled for your immersive pleasure. And when it comes to the emotional logic of the story, that comes at a price.

The experience actually begins with Madame Giry (the very game Betsy Morgan at my show) inviting one to partake choreographically of the title number, originally the Act II opener but apt here, since the dress code for attending the show (cocktail or formal wear that is black, white and silver with masks compulsory for all) keys into Maria Björnson‘s original costume design. It’s savvy, when you think about it, getting the audience to bring their own costumes. The production doesn’t have to pay for them and yet a lot of the visual interest in the show comes from staring at your fellow theatergoers, all dressed to the nines on my night. A sexy date clearly is the intention, and I suspect the show will be a precursor to numerous Midtown rendezvous and will put a bit of weekend spark back into a few New Jersey marriages, especially once those masks are repurposed postshow. A public service from the Phantom.

I found myself distracted by thinking what a royal pain this show must be to perform. The score of “Phantom” is hard enough to sing without riding escalators and sucking up bugs outside. Ergo, props to all.

Anna Zavelson, my Christine but one of several, had to hit those famous high notes inches away from audience members, not to mention brush past them in order to lie, somewhat fetishized, on a bed as a creepy “Phantom” hand emerged from the bed frame. A major young talent, she did all of this with remarkable aplomb, especially since my rather remote Phantom, Jeff Kready, also one of several, did not give her much to play against. Phantoms have to be pulsing objects of desire in that obsessive, sexy way this show popularized within the impunity of the 1990s. Here, not so much. But who knows which guy you will get?

Many immersive shows fail because audiences are asked to choose their own adventures then lose their way in the story. Those decisions mostly are minimized here, although the groups are split up on occasion. There’s a lot of prequel in the narrative. We find out more about the Phantom’s backstory, the prior psychological trauma that led to him becoming both a master of illusions and a man with a murderous grudge. That’s something new, although the show, which I thought a tad too long, also wants to deliver at those signature Lloyd Webber ditties, and thus the result falls uneasily between a new narrative and a new way of telling an old story for the faithful. Give me the old Prince production with the live musicians any day of the week, but those days, alas, are gone.

Yet the brand lives on. The coolest moment is when Giry tells us all to remove our masks and you finally see the flushed faces of those accompanying you on this journey (precisely where, I know not) and everyone heads to what now has become a dark cocktail bar where one may imbibe in one’s finery.

I had admired the decision to offer one glass of initial champagne and no more. The last thing “Masquerade” needs is a clump of the masked and inebriated, wandering around inside their minds.