Stranger Things: The First Shadow is a trap for snobs. A goodly number may start out with the assumption that the prequel to a Netflix series, one tailored to and featuring teenagers (I can hear the Eustace Tilleys sniff already), and especially one whose stock-in-trade is shock and gore, can’t possibly be executed with artistry, must be schlocky, and will offer nothing in the way of thematic or emotional interest. Well, there’s a good deal of juvenile hijinks along the way, a lot of running around and shouting, and fast talking about monsters and mysterious curses, I grant all that. The dialogue will take no prizes for eloquence (there’s a good reason for everyone’s talking fast). But it’s an exciting and even moving evening, all the same. While the small-screen classic Outer Limits always claimed to be “controlling the horizontal,” for three hours at the Marriott Marquis, all three of our dimensions are in the playmakers’ hands.
Not incidentally, audiences are bearing witness to the most phenomenal exhibition of technical wizardry Broadway has ever seen, and that includes the long-running Harry Potter sequel (whose illusion-meisters, Jamie Harrison and Chris Fisher, are behind this new show’s legerdemain). Paul Arditti’s sound design could not, I think, be bettered, the creaks and groans of battleships and dying creatures pinging off the walls and getting under your skin. There are gasp-inducing surprises including blood effects – watch out, grownups! – and I myself survived two jump scares, which is two more than I’ve had in any Broadway theater since Robert Duvall leapt from behind a refrigerator to attack Lee Remick in Wait Until Dark. Netflix’s ambitious experiment, bolstered by the solid theater know-how of Sonia Friedman Productions, accomplishes what the likes of Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark and King Kong: The Musical could not: translate the visceral excitement of the screen to the split-second demands of live performance.
Prior familiarity with the world created by The Duffer Brothers (who crafted the original story, along with playwright Kate Trefry and Harry Potter scribe Jack Thorne) is by no means a must, though it can’t hurt to know that the adolescents of Hawkins, IN have been coping with a lot of supernaturally-based weirdness since the early 1980’s, and this stage play goes back decades to explain why.
[Read David Finkle’s ★★★☆☆ review here.]
Following a monumental cold open involving the U.S.S. Eldridge and its famous 1943 “Philadelphia Experiment” of invisibility (apocryphal, you say? Hmm), we fast forward to 1959, where Victor and Virginia Creel (T.R. Knight and Rosie Benton) hopefully move into their new Midwestern home with delicate little Alice (a role shared by Poppy Lovell and Azalea Wolfe) and delicate, but seriously troubled older brother Henry (Louis McCartney). Introduced to the local high school in a hilarious exposition monologue by class president Sue Anderson (Ayana Cymone), Henry’s preternatural shyness, and odd attachment to his clunky transistor radio (keep an eye on it), freak out all his classmates except Penny Newby (Gabrielle Nevaeh), who’s got her own secrets.
You may have inferred, rightly, that we are in Stephen King territory here: taking teenagers’ fears seriously, confronting them with atrocities (the town’s pets start to get picked off), and scoring it all to the real music of the day. (D.J. Bob Newby, enacted winningly by Juan Carlos, has rock’n’roll hits on his turntable, and “The Nearness of You” plays a meaningful part.) It’s no spoiler to reveal that Henry’s odd relationship with electrical storms and other extrasensory impulses will transform him, slowly but surely, into a force to be reckoned with, in line with the classic horror trope that the forces of evil often choose their victims arbitrarily.
The show was lucky to locate young McCartney for the London engagement, and smart to bring him over. Henry Creel requires vulnerability yet strength, and the physical demands are close to those of Bernard Pomerance’s The Elephant Man (remember how many backaches and sprains came with that leading role?). How the lad gets through eight performances a week is anyone’s guess, but he’s most game and endearing, with emotional fluidity reminiscent of Christopher in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. Certainly a thesp to watch. Among the rest of the cast of 33, Nevaeh offers impressively layered work as the love interest, likewise Knight’s alcoholic, tormented Creel dad and Alex Breaux’s sinister, mad (?) scientist. Every appearance by Ian Dolley as class creep Walter Anderson, and Ted Koch as long-suffering police chief Hopper, lifts the spirits. It is a tribute to directors Stephen Daldry and Justin Martin that as wild as the action gets, things move like buttah and the emotional core remains solid.
So here it is, the Broadway show as theme park, right down to the three-storied façade of the ebony mansion through which all patrons must pass en route to their seats and the merch, and a thrill ride not to be forgotten. The goal is an immersive experience, and to my mind not only have they achieved it, but it’s a helluva lot more fun and exciting than the average “civilized” immersive (looking at you, Sleep No More). Are there enough of the fans and the curious to make it last and pay off? Only time will tell, just as only time will determine its chances to attract a whole new generation to the joys of live theater. Stranger things have happened.
Stranger Things: The First Shadow opened April 22, 2025 at the Marquis Theatre. Tickets and information: broadway.strangerthingsonstage.com
