Secretive off-Broadway ‘Phantom of the Opera’ riff is a sexy, hot ticket

When “The Phantom of the Opera” closed on Broadway in 2023 after a mirror-shattering 35-year run, everybody figured it would eventually come back.

Nobody, however, foresaw that the return of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical to New York would take up an entire department store and require comfortable shoes. 

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 off-Broadway at that old hallowed hall 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 decorated. 

The chandelier still falls and the gondola glides through the mist. I had tremendous phun.

The way the dream-like experience works is 60 people enter at each of six performances a night dressed in black, silver and white. If you’ve seen “Ratatouille,” you know what color the critics wore. Everybody also has to don a mask. 

Lacey face coverings are provided. But plenty of people brought their own from home, which begged some questions. 

Of course, twelve straight hours of poperatic singing is next to impossible. So, there is a sextet of talented Phantoms and Christines, and varying numbers of Raouls, Madame Girys and other roles acting out a tantalizing Tetris. 

I saw Jeff Kready as the opera ghost and Anna Zavelson as diva Daae, both of whom sing at a Broadway caliber just a couple feet from your face.

The orchestra unfortunately is canned — logistically that’s the only option — but at least the overture is played live by a devilishly good violinist, who lurks around throughout. 

Where “Masquerade” is unlike 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 outside of the opener at the New Year’s Eve ball and the plummeting of a certain famous light fixture, the rest of the performance unfolds in the usual order. 

Most pleasurable — and jumping 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 totally disorienting.

It’s like trying to find the exit of the world’s sexiest Whole Foods.

When a blast of fresh air hit me as our group walked out under the stars for the love duet “All I Ask of You,” I had no idea we were already at the very top of the building.

Traveling such a vast distance requires hopping on escalators, which do, for a second, yank you out of 19th Century France and back into a building where you could once buy paint brushes.

A few smart, artful additions raise “Masquerade” to something far greater than a jolly tourist attraction. Paulus, when she’s firing on all cylinders, knows how to fuse the commercial with the profound.

At one point, 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 visit isn’t all a downer. One performer puts a nail through her nose. Another swallows fire. There are shots.

Later, poor Eric returns in the show’s final seconds in a brilliant move involving our masks that’s strikingly beautiful. The inspired idea takes the “Masquerade” lyric “hide your face so the world can never find you” and wrings fresh new tears from it.

This entire revitalized gothic romance with its 1980s guitar riffs has that invigorating effect.

“The Phantom of the Opera” may have vanished from the Majestic Theatre, but there’s plenty of majesty to be found on 57th Street.