Stranger Things: The First Shadow

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Stranger Things: The First Shadow concludes with a Netflix joke that, besides being pretty funny, also represents a bit of chest-thumping for the play’s outsized number of developers who manage to successfully blur the line between theater and television. Whether that’s a good thing is a matter of taste, or a lack of it, but there’s no denying that Stranger Things: The First Shadow, which has journeyed from the West End to Broadway, is exactly the type of experience it wants to be: immersive; scary; and, even if you’ve never seen an episode of the streaming series from whence it comes, familiar. That’s because, imaginatively befitting its source material, the play is a storytelling stew of cultural callbacks that owes a debt–presumably unpaid– to Stephen King, Wes Craven, and other unsettling shapers of Gen-X childhoods.

Since the play’s Netflix inspiration, set in the fictional town of Hawkins, Indiana, hasn’t concluded its nostalgic run through the eighties yet, writer Kate Trefry, a multi-hatted veteran of the popular series, must go narratively backwards, which inevitably leads to retconning issues that might annoy the Comic-Con crowd. These Stranger Things aficionados also will notice that, despite plopping the prequel in the late fifties, Trefry still recycles a decent amount of plot from the flashback-fond series. Both of these problems connect to a bigger one: a need to shoehorn junior versions of the Stranger Things characters into the play to convince people to spend enormously for something cheaply and more satisfyingly available.

Fortunately, there is a holdover character at least partially worth his backstory: the play’s protagonist Henry Creel (Louis McCartney), the series’ major Season 4 antagonist who is now relatively sympathetic on the stage, though, admittedly, that’s a low bar. Fated to become the evil and hideous overlord of a parallel dimension called the Upside Down, Henry’s got a putative chance at an early redemption thanks to that hope of many a lost boy: attracting a self-abnegating female. But, alas, Stranger Things fans understand all too well that there is no actual suspense to the budding romance between Henry and his dream girl, Patty Newby (Gabrielle Nevaeh) beyond learning if she will somehow survive Henry’s affections.

For those in the canonical know, that previous sentence likely produced an audible gasp. Yes, Patty is related to Bob Newby and a youthful Bob is in the play (understudy Patrick Scott McDermott at the performance I attended). Not only will good-guy Bob grow up to be portrayed by typecast good-guy Sean Astin but, in the series’ greatest tearjerking moment, he’ll let himself get eaten by a pack of dog-like monsters in order to save others. While it’s wonderful to see Bob in better days, his presence doesn’t add much dramatically. He mostly just functions to non-threateningly complete a teenage love triangle with Joyce Byers, née Maldonado (Alison Jaye), and James Hopper, Jr. (Burke Swanson), which, as fans will immediately clock, poor Bob doesn’t have a chance of winning.

With cherished staleness, the Stranger Things faithful should also remember Henry’s PTSD-beset father Victor (T.R. Knight), tranquilizer-addicted mother Virginia (Rosie Benton), and hapless little sister Alice (Poppy Lovell alternating with Azalea Wolfe in the role). As for the play’s crisper appeal, it derives entirely from Henry’s relationship to Patty, an adoptee desperate to meet her birth mother (Ta’Rea Campbell). But that hint of freshness isn’t a product of Trefry’s clichéd effort to depict a misfit bond between the dementedly alone Henry and the merely alone Patty. Instead, the play’s consistent strength is McCartney and Nevaeh’s eccentric chemistry, which thoroughly outshines the show’s overwhelming visual effects (designed by Jamie Harrison, Chris Fisher, and 59 Studio). McCartney, in particular, is a marvel, as he finds his inner Brad Dourif to generate a glimmer of doubt that the menace in his eyes won’t turn into something worse.

Although Trefry is credited as the sole “writer” of Stranger Things: The First Shadow–perhaps the designation “playwright” was too pompous or mocking–the program records she had compositional assistance from The Duffer Brothers, the series’ creators, and Jack Thorne (Harry Potter and the Cursed Child), all of whom are noted as collaborating with Trefry on “an original story.” Leaving aside the unintended irony of that phrase being applied to Stranger Things, it’s likely this help largely meant reminding Trefey of her fan-service responsibilities.

Though, with encouragement or not, Trefey also delivers genuine novelty and subversiveness to the Stranger Things universe by making the young Joyce an avant-garde theater nerd who, after scorning Oklahoma! as trite and unchallenging, directs the type of thought-provoking work that could be a bummer for an otherwise fun-filled trek to New York or London. Nicely played, Stranger Things, you “global phenomenon,” eliciting astonished cheers from spectacularly torturing and killing characters, while turning Joyce’s dramatic ambitions into the true villain. I suppose director Stephen Daldry (The Inheritance, Billy Elliot: The Musical) and co-director Justin Martin (Prima Facie) merit grudging congratulations for that trick, too. But please, everyone, keep your prodigal hands off Hamlet.

Stranger Things: The First Shadow (open run)

Marquis Theatre, 210 West 46th Street, in Manhattan

For tickets, visit http://www.broadway.strangerthingsonstage.com

Running time: two hours and 45 minutes including one intermission

A popular Netflix series strikingly brings its mix of horror and nostalgia to Broadway.