The best immersive theater in New York right now

The Andrew Lloyd Webber musical The Phantom of the Opera, which hung up its mask in 2023, is somehow here again, albeit in a very different form: an immersive experience, à la Sleep No More, in which audiences are led en masque through a midtown complex designed to evoke the 19th-century Paris Opera House where soprano Christine Daaé is stalked by the killer who lives in the basement. The very notion of this reimagining—created by Lloyd Webber and director Diane Paulus, from a concept by Randy Weiner—is surprising; perhaps even more surprising is that, somehow, they pull it off. It’s a blast.—Adam Feldman

Audience members sit in a circle along with seven actors in Nick Thomas's hyper-intimate drama about an addiction support group that is forced to confront new challenges when its leader fails to show up. The scrappy troupe spit&vigor, formerly of Gowanus, has been performing the show roughly once a month since 2023; now it settles in for a longer run in a tiny studio space above the West Village's Players Theater. The cast includes company co-founders Sara Fellini and Adam Belvo (who alternates performances with Thomas himself). 

Tom and Betsy Salamon’s unique adventure—part interactive theater, part scavenger hunt, part walking tour—draws participants into an amusing web of puzzles and intrigue. The three-hour Village tour travels through quirky Greenwich Village on Saturday afternoon. Groups of as many as 11 are booked every half hour. 

An actor drinks heavily (in the vein of Comedy Central's Drunk History) and then tries to corral others into enacting a story by the Bard. Bibulous excess is encouraged.