Stranger Things: The First Shadow Broadway Reviews

While there are some fun jump scares, they, by nature, come and go quickly. For the most part, the show doesn’t mine the suspenseful, lingering dread that the series effectively deploys to keep you on the edge of your seat.

Is it a play? I mean, yes-ish? Is it an extravagant TV-meets-theater-meets-theme-park hybrid that probably has not entirely heartening implications for the future of Broadway? For sure. Is it also so unrelentingly absurd that it’s hard to be mad at? Absolutely.

All of the expensive visuals are in service of a throwaway play in which the real villain ain’t Vecna — it’s the writing.

The non-musical show... is a chaotic fire hose of fan-service with enough sensory stimulation to make even the most experienced gamer want to puke just a little.

The production is technically impressive in all respects, but when the sinister Dr. Brenner (Alex Breaux)—Matthew Modine in the series—made his ominous appearance at the close of the first act, I fantasized about pulling him aside to ask for a sedative. Although in truth the show itself was already soporific enough.

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.

A three-hour fan wiki brought to life, complete with origin stories, stilted dialogue, lame jokes, and sequences seemingly constructed only to set up the next visual effect.

Whatever of this makes sense might keep ticket-buyers interested, if not wholly involved, thanks to the proliferating special effects.

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.

Immersive, heartfelt, and exhilarating, First Shadow is a must-see spectacle for the Stranger Things obsessive as much as it is for the theater aficionado who wants to see the medium pushed to new heights.

Viewers of the series know that Henry will eventually become the demonic Vecna, ruler of the Upside Down and the monsters within, and how this backstory plays out since The First Shadow is ultimately an evening-long adaptation of a flashback sequence from season four. Most of the plot twists will be retrodden territory for Netflix viewers, and as such, when it comes to the story, the play’s fan service lies mostly in the recreation of iconic images from the series and in the supporting cast laying Easter eggs.

Trefry’s stage play is a muddled, pedestrian prequel... What’s on stage at the Marquis resembles a jukebox musical comedy with lots of shock effects haphazardly thrown in.

There’s the occasional feeling of disappointment that the show doesn’t lean less on the theatrics and focus on the richer themes in Trefry’s script, like Henry’s fear of hurting the girl he likes, Patty (Gabrielle Nevaeh), and how that relates to his relationship to his mother, or Patty’s own self-conception as an orphan in search of her absent mom. But Stranger Things: The First Shadow was probably never going to dig deep into these ideas. It was always going to be too busy dazzling to let its audience into the real darkness.

There are similarities of design with “Harry Potter,” and a few visual tricks that recall that prior enterprise, which in general has a lot more emotional pull than this newer one, which relies a lot more on tech. That said, the two leads, Louis McCartney as Henry Creel and Alison Jaye as Joyce Maldonado, are both emotionally resonant and generally stellar, and both Rosie Benton and T.R. Knight, who play Henry’s parents, certainly know what they are doing.

Enough can’t be said that this production doesn’t just change the game of Broadway, it smashes the game board and shoots it into a new dimension. When you take one of the most watched television shows in history and bring it to the stage, the pressure is high but Netflix and producer Sonia Friedman cracked the code thanks to the work of hundreds of artisans and crew—a nod should be given to Jamie Harrison and Chris Fisher for their work on illusions and visual effects. Stranger Things: The First Shadow may just be the best production, visually speaking, to ever hit Broadway—well in this universe, anyway.