‘Stranger Things: The First Shadow’ Review: West End Play Brings Netflix Series Thrillingly to Life
8 / 10
“We need something a little theatrical.” Boy, does excited Bob Newby (Christopher Buckley) get his wish. He’s trying to solve a staging problem in “The Dark of the Moon,” the school play he and the other kids are secretly putting on in Hawkins, Ind., in 1959. But audiences watching “Stranger Things: The First Shadow” will likely greet the line with a wry smile because immense, intense theatricality is there for all to see. Are the three plot-driven hours of virtuoso, state-of-the-art stagecraft always matched by sustained drama? Not quite. Does that matter? Not at all.
