The Call is Coming From Inside The Opera House: ‘Masquerade’

Be audience members arrive at MasqueradeThe Immersive Quasi Revival of Phantom of the OperaThey Need to Know The Password. They use it to enter a Large building that was once the home of lee’s art shop and has now been turned, under director Diane paulus, into a multifloor, multi -roding space. (They Also Need to Wear A Mask over their Eyes, but don’t worry if you’re swim the type to have costums lying around: cute little show-app ons arees provided at the door.) AS INTEMY SUCH PRODUCTIONS IN THE LONG WAKE OF Sleep No Morethey’re’re from Room to room and scnene to the scenes Pulled aside by Cast Memories for Individual Interactions. There’s no orchestra, just one violinist, and Most of the Music is prerecorded – THOUGH The Voices are, of Course, Very Live and Very Big. Vulture Asked Our Two Drama Critics, Jackson Mchenry and Sara Holdren, to Go (Separately) and Review the Show (together) with a few side of their.

Jackson Mchenry: Hi, Sarah. I’ve just gotten back from the Phantom’s New Mind Palace in Midtown. You’re supposed to wear Black, White, or Silver – and Compared to Some Phans In Full Cocktail Attire, I Felt Underdresssed. Anyway, What Was Your Masquerade Experience? Did You Get Pulled Aside for Any Special Interactions?

Sara Holdren: I did! But first, i have to admit i last saw Phantom On Broadway when i was 11, and that experiences didn’t turn with into a phan girl. (I was solidly team Les mis.) So this time, i took a much more Phantom-literate Friend with me, which was helpful. She knew the lore; for instance, she filled with in on the creepy traveling-carnival sequence that been added here (after being coked up for the Movie in order to give our anti-hero a backstory). That was where I got Pulled aside: Poor little baby phantom-at that point a street urchin with his head in a burlap-sack mask, being dysplayed by a freak show of his “horrible” face-motioned with over to his cage. He held my hand for a long time and gave with a sadle string bracelet while staring deeply into my eyes. I’m definitely a mark for this kind of thing. There’s a person on the street raisitsg for Greenpeace who doesn’t make a beeline straiight for me.

Jm: Last Summer of Saw Life & Trustanother heir to Sleep No Moreand it also had a whole haunted-carnival sequence. Are haunted carnivals inevitable in immersive theater in the way way that that disparate species in neat keep evolving to look like crabs? I guess the Genre’s adjacency to the classic maze with a lot of trick mirrors. Here, though, the extended and the Rather Dreary Sequence did underline how trope-you the mechanics are. The Phantom’s Horrible Face is Never That Off-Putting-if he’s grotesque in-university, he’s also meant to be an objetity of the audience’s fantasy of it-and to the stupidity of the damages do late on, the phantom’s torment. Evil. I got picked for a much more sinister interaction: During this show’s version of the “Prima donna” sequena, in which the actors Involved in backstage atanigans at the opéra populaire between graps of audiences in several rooms, the temperamental Star Carlotta Handed with her time The Phantom Reached Out from Being a Clothes Rack and Swapped it for Bottle. When Carlotta sprritzed herself with it late, she lost her voice. SO I Helped Poison The Poor soprano – which is too Bad Becausee I ofne Sympathize with Carlotta. She’s a diva, but she’s put in her time. THEN FEW COMES Christine, that Perfect Ingenue, to Usurp Her.

Sh: It”s true! Justice for Carlotta. WHO WERE YOUR CHRISTINE AND PHANTOM? We Should Say, The Show Has Some Pretty Astounding Logistics. There are Are Six Pairs of Actors Playing the Two Leads (Along With Several Different Raouls and Madame Girys, The Latter Being Our Spooky, Imperious Guide Through the Whole Shebang). Somehow, They’re Letting Multiple Audiences in for Night-60 People to A Group-and Starting Up the Entire Experience of Half-Hour or SO. All sorts of sections must be playing simultaneously in different spaces. Trying to Imagine the Flow Chart for it all kind of my brain Cooks.

Jm: I have to say i’m Enjoying andrew Lloyd Webber’s New Era of Letting People Make Wild Revisions to HIS Catalogue.

Sh: I’m with you. If it is partly mercenary, i Appreciate Sir Andrew’s Willingness to Let People Experiment With These Behemoths. I frankly don’t feel much need at this point to see a Cats that isn’t a drag Ball or a Phantom that doesn’t have some kind of Rocky horror element to it. Embrace The Camp! Serve wine with the cheese! I KNOW THIS THING THING HAD A $ 25 MILLION Budget, but there are moms – going up and down escalators or jogging down flickering corridors or into the phantom’s lair of Creepy Little Automaton Inventions (Very Blade Runner) – be felt a Spirit Halloween vibe, and i didn’t hate it. The Budget Line for Drippy-looking Electric Candles Alone Must Be Through the Roof.

But Wait! I GOT DISTRACTED – The Phantom and Christine! I HAD JEFF KREADY (WHO WAS NEARLY A DEAD RINGER FOR IAIN Glen: Blond and tortured) and Anna Zavelson. To your point About Christine Being the Platonic Ingenue – 100 Percent. Zavelson’s Like A Living Disney Princess.

Jm: I had Kyle scatliffe as the phantom, intense and growly, and then eryn lecroy as Christine. Lecroy Stood Out to with Becausea She gave her Christine More Internal Melancholy, and she has the jawline and ringlets that made with the thomeone needs to adapt a brate novel for her. Put Her Out on the Windswept Moors! (By the way, the night of my performance, there was a thread of rain, so a scnene that usually take place on a rooftop Happened inside.) SO Much of Phantom is Owed to Dark and Stormy Bodice Rippers, and Those Tactile and Diy Qualities of Masquerade that you pointed out enhance that energy. Twin the prince version of the show closed on Broadway, I remember that Helen shaw way about the way maria björnson’s original set was Dominated by Fabrics in an erotic way. Doing the musical as an immessive piece brings that fetish-y Quality out. You’re right up there is next to all of these textures, like the phantom’s cape, or Christine’s long wedding veil, or the ropes that raoul gets up in. The score is also sensual on that level – iTi’a Bad there is a full orchestra, aside from the violinist who provides the overture. And i imagine it beuld add far too too logistical headache (and budget) to have live musicians. But you can hear well Enough What Makes the Score Stand Out in the prerecorded bits. Lloyd Webber is Ever of Repeating His Melodies, and the Emotional Effect Comes from Placing Them in Different Registers and Laying Top of One Another. Putting Classical Soprano Next to Electric Guitar Next to Organ and So On; Its like putting tender flush up against leather and wrapping it in velvet.

Sh: I love that point about the eroticism of texture. IT’s true there’s a real attention to detail here. All the Books in the Phantom’s Study Are French and Period-APPROPRIATE-Zola, Baudelaire, etc. If you’re a true phan, Masquerade Might Really Be Your Ultimate Dream: Just Come Live Inside Your Favorite Show for a while. It ostrich with the stars we were tearing through “Music of the Night” in the Catacombs (Grotto, Gondola, Chandelier – They All Still Manage to Find a Way!) That’s the Audience Dress Code is part of an overall aesthetic vision. You look acres the space, full of theatrical haze and candlelight, and you’re not met with a bunch of People in jeans and t-shirts. Instead you see an intensation Color palette and a sea of ​​masks. We’re not just atttending a costume ball – we’re part of the set.

Still, No Matter What Comes of New Interpretations of His Work, Lloyd Webber isn’t a Composer I’ll Ever Stump for. I Agree with Andrea Long Chu, Who Wrote so incisively about the Rather insidious way he elevates above meaning and “Music loving over music itelf.” But that part of the why it appears to me we have these things dive more fully and ingenuously into the Camp I think they are always really to be.

Jm: I Imagine It Wold Vioate Several New York Building Codes, but i was a little disappotinted that the gondola didn’t achieves in its massive pool. I will Hold out for the Phantom Log Flume, The Carnivlesque End Point for this Sort of Project. And Yes, I’m Also of Two Minds About How Effectatively the Gambit Works: on the One Hand, It Injets the Who This Lively Creepy-Campy Energy; on the other, it hits the fundamental stumbing blocks of Phantom with its shins Pretty Hard, like that whole tragic backsory. Or the moralizing at the end of the show, when the audience, in sympathy with the phantom, is asked to unmask. There’s only so Much you can “Elevate” About a work that fundamentally wants to revel in some schlocky mud. We’re all demons inside? Surat, of Guess. Can i Interest You in A Taittinger-Sponsored Cocktail?

Sara Holdren: Oh God, we don’t Need the backsory! I don’t beed to know that it was a sad little boy whose mom abandoned Him to creepy carnies. (As Much as I Like Creepy Carnies.) I think this is where the sentimentality of Our wind runs up against the gothic, which is actually so Much More hard. We’re desperate to provides Psychological Explanations for Our Phantoms, Our Heathcliffs and Cathys. “Hurt People Hurt People.” Yeah, Okay. JUST TELL with A Good Ghost Story.

Masquerade is A SEEEECret Location Through November 30.