Lately, it seems, there’s been no surer sign that a book, film or TV show has become a cultural phenomenon than the arrival of a musical parody. Recent years have brought, for example, the Harry Potter spoof PUFFS and Fifty Shades! The Musical Parody, both of which I’d recommend most heartily to diehard fans of those franchises.
The good news about the unauthorized Stranger Sings! The Parody Musical—introduced off-Broadway last year, and now returning with some clever tweaks—is that you don’t have to be an ardent follower of the Netflix series on which it’s based to be thoroughly entertained by Jonathan Hogue’s sprightly, savvy book, music and lyrics, all of which reveal a budding theater-maker—Hogue is also a director, and is pursuing an MFA in management and producing uptown at Columbia—with a joyful affinity for fusing musical theater with broader pop culture influences.
For the uninitiated, “Stranger Things,” now preparing for its fifth and final season, is set in the 1980s in fictional Hawkins, Indiana, where secret experiments in a shady laboratory have cracked open a portal to an alternate dimension called The Upside Down, inhabited by monsters such as the Demogorgon, a hideous humanoid with supernatural powers. The lab’s subjects include a telekinetic teenager called Eleven, who in the first season managed to escape, and has since mingled with the small-town adolescents prominent in the series. Principal characters also include Joyce Byers, a divorced mother of two sons—played in the series, fittingly, by former teen idol Winona Ryder—whose younger boy, Will, was abducted by a creature from The Upside Down in Season One.
Though familiar with some of this background through media osmosis, I recruited a more informed (if still casual) admirer of the show, my fifteen-year-old daughter, to accompany me to a recent preview of Stranger Sings! She helpfully explained the relevant aspects of Walt Spangler’s winking scenic design, from the Christmas lights and Dungeons & Dragons table that identified Will’s lair to a sign emblazoned “Scoops Ahoy,” indicating the ice cream parlor at the local mall.
Happily, Hogue arranges things so that you don’t need a guide to quickly get your bearings. From the moment the vibrant, youthful ensemble—giddily directed by Nick Flatto—bursts into the bouncy opening number, “Welcome to Hawkins,” the necessary particulars are swiftly laid out and sent up, always with as much affection as tartness. Even inside jokes—one involving a Kate Bush song, another a crushed can of Coca-Cola—fly independently, to a point, within the smart but unabashedly goofy context that Hogue and Flatto provide.
The ’80s references come particularly fast and furious; there are nods to Dirty Dancing, Thriller and E.T.—though also to Wicked, Gypsy and The Music Man. Previously produced in a proscenium setting, the show is now being staged in the round, so that the actors—and choreographer Ashley Marinelli, who won a Broadway World Award for her witty, exuberant work here—play to the crowd in full.
In another inspired twist, the character of Will is represented by a puppet—maneuvered with hilarious facility by Caroline Huerta, the same actress who plays Joyce, ensuring that the single mom remains on the edge of hysteria throughout. (In one number, Huerta also leads a whirlwind tour of Ryder’s heyday bound to tickle anyone over 30.) Other players also juggle roles, large and small; Garrett Poladian doubles as the school hunk and a gentler, nerdier heartthrob before having a deft comic turn as an older villain, while Jamir Brown pops up as a sizzling teen diva after playing one of Will’s dorky friends.
Transitions are assisted by Matthew Solomon’s canny costume and hair design, in which wigs evoke the era’s tonsorial excess. They also help sustain the creepy but comical vibe that, along with its sheer exuberance, makes Stranger Sings! a thriller in more than one respect.
Stranger Sings! opened September 22, 2022, at St. Luke’s and runs through January 1, 2023. Tickets and information: strangersingsthemusical.com
