{"id":1588840,"date":"2025-09-30T11:05:59","date_gmt":"2025-09-30T15:05:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/observer.com\/?p=1588840"},"modified":"2025-09-30T11:05:59","modified_gmt":"2025-09-30T15:05:59","slug":"review-masquerade-phantom-of-the-opera-experience-immersive-theater","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/observer.com\/2025\/09\/review-masquerade-phantom-of-the-opera-experience-immersive-theater\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: \u2018Masquerade\u2019 Tries to Revive \u2018Phantom of the Opera\u2019 But Embalms It Instead"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Jeff Kready and Anna Zavelson. Photo by Oscar Ouk<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Do you love mandatory gussying up for the theater, to see and (giggle) be seen? Do you shiver with delight, your features hidden under a frilly, lacy mask? Does it thrill you to stumble down staircases and stagger through dimly lit hallways while Andrew Lloyd Webber\u2019s pre-recorded music pours like clotted cream through speakers? Yeah, me neither. And yet, there I was at Masquerade<\/i>, the site-specific, immersive remix of The Phantom of the Opera,<\/i> wondering if veteran director Diane Paulus could turn aversion into affection. Will my heart ever melt over this hideously deformed musical?<\/p>\n

Unlike the friend who chaperoned me, a \u201cPhan,\u201d I didn\u2019t catch Lloyd Webber\u2019s melodramatic operetta as a teen, and therefore its bombastic, pop-Puccini score never imprinted on my oatmeal brain. (I\u2019m the Phantom! I\u2019m Christine, too!) Truth is, I didn\u2019t appreciate musicals until I was in college and someone lent me a CD of Sondheim\u2019s Assassins.<\/i> Phantom<\/i> is the gateway for those who can\u2019t handle Sweeney Todd\u2019s<\/i> bleak, witty sadism. In reviews of the revival of Sunset Boulevard<\/i><\/a> and the misbegotten Bad Cinderella<\/i><\/a>,<\/i> I’ve gone on record as finding Lloyd Webber\u2019s overwrought, repetitious scores insufferable. Despite the fact that Phantom<\/i> ran for a record 35 years on Broadway, I\u2019m not alone in my distaste for its camp-gothic excesses.<\/p>\n

But here was a golden opportunity for conversion. Paulus\u2019s first \u201cimmersive\u201d breakthrough (before the term was everywhere) was in the late 1990s, when she staged an experiential version of A Midsummer Night\u2019s Dream<\/i> using none of Shakespeare\u2019s language but a slew of disco hits and mirror balls. The Donkey Show<\/i> started life in a former piano store on Ludlow Street and eventually moved Off Broadway to run for years. I remember it as a sweaty blur of glitter-caked, roller-skating actors in short-shorts, pasties and huge Afros. Paulus is an old pro at taking theatrical IP and infusing wild, contemporary life into it.<\/p>\n

If only she\u2019d done so here. When the creative team of director Daniel Fish\u2019s audacious Oklahoma!<\/i> <\/a>re-orchestrated the score for a small, bluegrass ensemble, we heard Rodgers and Hammerstein\u2019s iconic tunes with fresh ears. Or when co-directors Zhailon Levingston and Bill Rauch framed Cats<\/i> as a queer ballroom extravaganza, the music assumed a transgressive social function that turned kitty kitsch into catharsis. At Masquerade,<\/i> the music is not revivified; it\u2019s embalmed. Singers perform to pre-recorded tracks, and the canned score sounds similar to a full-orchestra cast album. Which gives each number a karaoke hollowness that the talented vocalists struggle to enliven. Imagine if instead the music were live, translated into rock, EDM or some fusion of Baroque and techno? A roving string quartet? Virtuosic a cappella? Anything.<\/p>\n

Forget ears. How about eyeballs? No argument, Masquerade<\/i> is a head-spinning fusion of 360-degree design and crowd control, jointly conceived by Lloyd Webber, Paulus and Randy Weiner (the latter an impresario behind Sleep No More<\/i><\/a>). The logistics are staggering: audiences (instructed to dress semi-formal and bring masks) are admitted into a shadowy converted space on West 57th Street: six audiences enter at six staggered times, and each group sees its own Christine and Phantom pairing. When I attended, the glowing, ardent Anna Zavelson played Christine opposite Jeff Kready\u2019s dignified yet tormented Phantom. Over two uninterrupted hours, we follow characters throughout and beneath the Palais Garnier opera house as soprano ing\u00e9nue Christine is, well, groomed by the Phantom\u2014composer, inventor, hoarder of candles\u2014a mad, cursed artiste determined to make her a star in his works. He pines for the young singer, yet his face is deformed and he\u2019s traumatized by a childhood as a circus freak. There\u2019s a wealthy young man named Raoul who loves Christine, and the poor girl is torn between the two. Even by the standards of goofy opera plots, this one is thin, and the comic relief is leaden.<\/p>\n

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