Andrew Lloyd Webber says 'nothing has ever been attempted' like immersive 'Phantom' show

Andrew Lloyd Webber breaks down immersive \

NEW YORK – Steps away from Carnegie Hall and Brooklyn Diner, there’s an unsuspecting art supplies shop with newspaper-plastered windows.

But walk inside the Midtown storefront, and you’ll be whisked into the 19th-century Paris Opera House, where a masked genius haunts the halls and an iconic chandelier crashes to the floor.

Welcome to “Masquerade,” a fully immersive production of “The Phantom of the Opera” that opened off-Broadway last fall. It’s a wildly ambitious and richly emotional new staging of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s 1988 Broadway musical, performed concurrently every night by six different casts, who guide audiences from the Phantom’s eerie underground lair to the star-filled rooftops of Manhattan.

“Nothing has ever been attempted like this in musical theater before,” Webber tells USA TODAY. “Everything is so minutely timed down to the very last millisecond – it’s an extraordinary technical feat.”

For his part, “I enjoyed it madly. It was great fun to be on an adventure.”