Broadway review by Adam Feldman
Stranger Things is happening. Nearly three years after plans were announced for a theatrical prequel to Netflix’s hit nostalgia-horror series, and 18 months after the debut of that prequel in London, the show has finally arrived on Broadway. While it calls itself The First Shadow, there’s nothing dark or stealthy about the massive production that is now possessing the Marquis Theatre, a second-floor hotel auditorium built Poltergeist-style on the graves of five old venues that were razed to make way for the Marriott. There’s something apt, inevitable even, about Stranger Things taking over this accursed space. Like it or not: It’s heeeee-eeeere.
Directed by Stephen Daldry and co-directed by Justin Martin, Stranger Things announces its maximalist style from the outset with an eye-popping interdimensional disaster. It is 1943, and the U.S.S. Eldridge—yes, a J.K. Rowling–level pun on eldritch—is the subject of a secret experiment by a government outpost that I regret to inform you is named “Project Rainbow base Marquis.” The goal is to make the Eldridge invisible, but instead it moves to a different plane, as though tearing through a timespace map of the known world. Here be dragons, or rather demogorgons: slinky monsters with faces that open like carnivorous flowers. The ship’s captain stares into the Abyss, and the Abyss stares back.
Stranger Things: The First Shadow | Photograph: Courtesy Evan Zimmerman
Then, bang bang, this cold open ends, a Stranger Things logo appears and we move to 1959 in Hawkins, Indiana, Broadway, population 33. The rialto’s only larger cast is in Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, this show's close cousin. Both are epic spinoffs of popular series on supernatural themes, set in different generations from the originals; both are presented by the trans-Atlantic megaproducer Sonia Friedman; both include illusions designed by Jamie Harrison. Harry Potter playwright Jack Thorne is even co-credited with shaping this play’s story alongside its overall author, Kate Trefry, and the Duffer Brothers, who created the TV series. Unlike Cursed Child, however—the pre-Ozempic version, at least—The First Shadow doesn’t offer much by way of characters or plot beyond adding meager flesh to already familiar bones. And padding a skeleton doesn’t make it scarier, just bulkier.
Stranger Things: The First Shadow | Photograph: Courtesy Matthew Murphy
The central character of Trefly’s play is Henry Creel (Louis McCartney), a troubled teen who will grow up to become the franchise’s primary baddie but at this point is more like a boy Wednesday Addams: morbid and unsettling. Henry’s father (T.R. Knight) and mother (Rosie Benton) have relocated to Hawkins from Arizona—where, rumor has it, Henry blinded a neighbor—in hope of a new start. “I’m normal,” he repeats to himself, but he's not. All teenagers have demons, but his demons are real; they give him brutal powers and sometimes seem to control him. Henry is not on the spectrum, as he may initially seem, but he is an extension of Project Rainbow; his connections to the Eldridge, and those of the sadistic Dr. Martin Brenner (Alex Breaux), are the play’s most substantial contributions to Stranger Things lore.
Stranger Things: The First Shadow | Photograph: Courtesy Matthew Murphy
Imagining sympathetic back stories for bad guys is not a new trick: The literary originality of John Gardner’s Grendel and Gregory Maguire’s Wicked has already rusted into the Star Wars prequels and more recent villain’s-eye narratives (Maleficent, Joker, Ratched, Cruella). And the specifics of Henry’s arc are also not new: They correspond, if inexactly, to flashbacks from Season 4 of the TV series. In a genre that tends to draw on fear of the unknown, that doesn’t leave much room for suspense. Watching it, you can’t help knowing that by the time the TV timeline begins, Stranger Things will have happened.
The play gives Henry a budding romance with Patty Newby (Gabrielle Nevaeh), who has been adopted by their school’s principal. They bond over their shared love for the Captain Midnight adventure serial and because both feel like social outcasts, though Henry is actually treated quite well by his classmates, and he and Patty are cast as the leads in the school play (which, by very silly coincidence, is The Dark of the Moon, a 1945 drama about a witch boy and the girl he loves). Patty doesn’t seem perturbed at all when he reveals his supernatural powers to her, which is one of many things that make you doubt that Stranger Things could happen in anything like a real world. But McCartney’s extraordinary presence draws you in all the same. It’s an intensely physical performance—at one point, the small and flexible actor jumps into a larger man’s arms like a chimp—but also a magnetically focused and emotive one. He’s the production’s most special effect.
Stranger Things: The First Shadow | Photograph: Courtesy Evan Zimmerman
While the parts of the play that deal with Henry are evasive on the question of his free will—and oversentimental about a boy who tortures animals and murders people—they are far more interesting than the rest. An inordinate amount of time is devoted to Henry’s peers, eight of whom are destined to become the parents of the four kids from Season 1. Joyce Maldonado (Alison Jaye) and two boys who inexplicably love her, Jim Hopper (Burke Swanson) and Bob Newby (Juan Carlos), don homemade Ghostbusters gear to investigate local misdoings in what amounts to a paranormal Scooby-Doo adventure. (Bob, who moonlights as a radio DJ: “Another pet was found dead today, which brings the grand total to five pets in nine days. It’s got some wondering if something sinister is going on.” Wondering?)
Stranger Things: The First Shadow | Photograph: Courtesy Matthew Murphy
Unless you’re a franchise fanatic on the hunt for Easter eggs, the non-Creel material drags. But it may be wrong to judge Stranger Things as a play, exactly. In a way, it’s not far removed from other Netflix tie-ins like Squid Game: The Experience or The Queen's Ball: A Bridgerton Experience. When Daldry and Martin bring the show's best elements together—McCartney’s acting, Miriam Buether’s sets, Brigitte Reiffenstuel’s costumes, Jon Clark’s lighting, Paul Arditti’s sound, the production group 59’s video design and effects—the production is like a breathtaking theme-park ride. And as with a roller coaster, there are longueurs as the show chugs up to where it needs to be to deliver the next big whoop. Go and enjoy, but don’t be surprised if you soon forget that Stranger Things has happened.
Stranger Things: The First Shadow. Marquis Theatre (Broadway). By Kate Trefry. Story by the Duffer Brothers, Jack Thorne and Trefry. Directed by Stephen Daldry. Co-directed by Justin Martin. With Louis McCartney, T.R. Knight, Rosie Benton, Alex Breaux, Gabrielle Nevaeh, Alison Jaye, Juan Carlos, Burke Swanson, Andrew Hovelson. Running time: 2hrs 40mins. One intermission.
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Stranger Things: The First Shadow | Photograph: Courtesy Evan Zimmerman
