Guests attending the October 31 performance of Masquerade Off-Broadway are invited to "Le Bal Macabre," a Halloween soirée in the Phantom's lair following the evening's show. The immersive Phantom of the Opera production officially opened September 29 at 218 W. 57th Street (formerly Lee's Art Shop). The production will also sell soirée-only tickets.

This inventive new staging, which began July 31, plays to six small audience groups each evening, meaning the complete cast features more leads than the show did on Broadway. Across the six performance timeslots, the Phantom is played by Jeff Kready, Telly Leung, Hugh Panaro, Kyle Scatliffe, Clay Singer, and Nik Walker (who is out for the next several weeks to star in Bull Durham at Paper Mill Playhouse, but will return exclusively for the Halloween performance); and Christine and Meg are played by Haile Ferrier, Eryn LeCroy, Francesca Mehrotra, Riley Noland, Kaley Ann Voorhees, and Anna Zavelson.

The Halloween ball will offer live burlesque performances provided by The Box and the opportunity to dance along to the "Music of the Night" underneath the famed chandelier. The dress code remains the same for any performance date: guests are asked to wear black, white, or silver, and are encouraged to dress extravagantly for the occasion.

The production has also added several actors to its company, with Lee H. Alexander, Matthew Curiano, Nicole J. Fergeson, Michael Kuhn, Dario Natarelli, Alex Ross, Cooper Stanton, and Olivia Tarchick newly joining.

They join a cast that includes Alaska, Laura Lee Anderson, Baby Byrne, Nicholas Edwards, Gabriella Enriquez, Nkrumah Gatling, Francisco Javier González, Cooper Grodin, Maxfield Haynes, Bryan Hernandez-Luch, Satomi Hofmann, Kody Jauron, Maree Johnson, Tia Karaplis, Nathan Keen, Joseph Kerr, Jacob Lacopo, Rawb Lane, Claire Leyden, Georgia Mendes, Sami Merdinian, Anna Monoxide, Betsy Morgan, Charles Osborne, Chris Ryan, Paul Adam Schaefer, Phumzile Sojola, Jeremy Stolle, Jack Sullivan, Andrew Wojtal, Nikita Yermak, and Kevin Zambrano.

The production, modeled after the seminal immersive production Sleep No More, which ran for 14 years at NYC's McKittrick Hotel, seeks to plant audiences right into the plot of Gaston Leroux's The Phantom of the Opera—of course, within the lens of Andrew Lloyd Webber's long-running 1986 West End-Broadway musical. Once you have entered the Opera House, you will join in on the "ghost hunt," tracing the steps of the infamous Opera Ghost, who has been terrorizing the theatre's performers and management. As the story unfolds, you learn of the Opera Ghost's mentorship over Christine Daae—a young soprano who has become the object of his obsession.

Tony winner Diane Paulus (Waitress, 1776) is directing a creative team that includes Hunter Bird, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, Kathy Fabian, James Fluhr, Jessie Flynn, Nicola Formichetti, Skylar Fox, Kate Lumpkin, J. J. Janas, Brett Jarvis, Marc Kimelman, Lee McCutcheon, Scott Pask, Emilio Sosa, Gypsy Snider, Ben Stanton, and William Waldrop.

Attendees of the production have been given instructions from "their host," which includes a dress code advising patrons dress "extravagantly" in black, white, or silver and to wear a masquerade mask (if you do not have one, one will be provided) and to avoid wearing high heels to facilitate safe walking in the building's recreation of the Paris catacombs.The venue is described as fully ADA accessible, and guests with specific accessibility needs are encouraged to email [email protected].

Visit MasqueradeNYC.com.

close gallery

0 of

Photos: Masquerade Off-Broadway

Next Slide  

You may also like

• 
  Look Back at the Original and Revival Productions of The Color Purple
• 
  Peter and the Wolf, Peter and the Starcatcher, and More Creative PLAYBILLDER Covers
• 
  Photos: Guys and Dolls at Shakespeare Theatre Company