MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Andrew Lloyd Webber's "The Phantom Of The Opera" has a new life of sorts - off Broadway. The show ended its 35-year Broadway run in 2023. The new immersive version is called "Masquerade." Jeff Lunden explains this radical transformation of the popular musical.
(SOUNDBITE OF ANDREW LLOYD WEBBER'S "PHANTOM PHANTASY")
JEFF LUNDEN, BYLINE: Audiences for "Masquerade" get to hear a lot of the familiar score of "The Phantom Of The Opera," as they walk all over the six floors of a former art supply store in Midtown Manhattan into rooms that have been converted into various parts of the Paris Opera house.
DIANE PAULUS: So we are sitting in what we call one of the plot rooms.
LUNDEN: Diane Paulus is the director of "Masquerade" and worked for three years with composer Andrew Lloyd Webber to adapt a huge spectacle into a piece of intimate theater.
PAULUS: It's all decked out like a dressing room backstage at the Paris Opera with mirrors and makeup and dresses and props and wigs and toe shoes.
LUNDEN: Groups of only 60 audience members gather to make their way from floor to floor, backstage, onstage in the Phantom's lair, at a carnival on the roof in what the production calls pulses. There are six shows a night with six different Phantoms and Christines.
PAULUS: There are 38 performers, and some of them do one show, some of them do all six shows. It's a very complicated matrix.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA")
HUGH PANARO: (Singing) Sing once again with me. Our strange duet.
LUNDEN: If you've seen "The Phantom Of The Opera," you'll recognize much of the plot about a disfigured, murderous genius and the singer he loves, though it's been sliced and diced and backstory added. What makes this really different is that it's happening just a few feet away from the audience. The night I went, The Phantom put his hand on my shoulder. Hugh Panaro played The Phantom over 2,000 times on Broadway. He says after the first run through of "Masquerade," director Diane Paulus told him...
PANARO: I love where you're going with this. I need you to do 80% less. And she was right because I was still reaching across the footlight and you don't have to. You can be subtle. What you did before with a hand gesture, you can do with a look.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA")
HUGH PANARO AND FRANCESCA MEHROTRA: (Singing) And in this labyrinth, where night is blind, the phantom of the opera is there.
LUNDEN: Francesca Mehrotra, who plays the singer, Christine, to Panaro's Phantom, says the intimacy of the performance is different from anything she's experienced before.
FRANCESCA MEHROTRA: I had a moment the other night where Christine is feeling very unsure of what to do and anxious, and I was singing to this audience member, and they looked back at me and just quietly mouthed, I'm sorry. And I was like, oh, my gosh, like, you just don't get to see that kind of reaction and feedback when you're on a precenium stage.
(SOUNDBITE OF ANDREW LLOYD WEBBER'S "MASQUERADE")
LUNDEN: Another way "Masquerade" differs from seeing a traditional show is that everyone in the audience wears a mask and is asked to dress up, says Diane Paulus.
PAULUS: We have a dress code at "Masquerade," and it's black, white and silver, cocktail or formal attire. I had no expectation that we would have, like, the gowns, the headdresses, the masks that people wear.
(SOUNDBITE OF ANDREW LLOYD WEBBER'S "MASQUERADE")
LUNDEN: And Paulus says composer Andrew Lloyd Webber was a willing partner in reimagining his best-known musical and having six casts do it simultaneously.
PAULUS: I did hear that Andrew loved puzzles, so that was my first clue that maybe he'd be up for this. Andrew and I worked on what would this new creation be and forming the script and the dramaturgy. And he was an incredible dramaturgical partner because he obviously knows the show so well.
LUNDEN: But audiences who think they know "The Phantom Of The Opera" are in for a surprise when they don their masks and attend "Masquerade." They might even be asked to dance. For NPR News, I'm Jeff Lunden in New York.
(SOUNDBITE OF ANDREW LLOYD WEBBER'S "MASQUERADE") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
