Chris Fisher Archives - TheaterScene.net

Chris Fisher

Paranormal Activity

September 2, 2026

The ability to see all five rooms in the house is par of the fun as you will find yourself constantly looking around to see where the next shock will occur from illusions designer Chris Fisher: the bathroom shower curtain, the dimly lit bedroom, the creepy room designated as the nursery, etc. Of course, lighting designer Anna Watson and sound designer Gareth Fry have a good deal to do with the events that occur: lights go on and off or blackout altogether, unaccountable sounds are heard like the knocks at the door but no one is there. Lights pass through the windows: is it a car or something creepier? [more]

Stranger Things: The First Shadow

April 30, 2025

"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. [more]

Back to the Future: The Musical

August 16, 2023

"Back to the Future: The Musical," the time travel adventure, joins a long line of problematic screen to stage musicalizations which do not improve on the originals in any way. Joining the list that includes in recent memory "Pretty Woman," "King Kong," "Tootsie," "Mrs. Doubtfire" and "Almost Famous," Back to the Future, using one of the original movie’s co-writers (Bob Gale without Robert Zemeckis), attempts to transplant the film in toto to the stage of the Winter Garden Theatre without adding anything new to the mix other than having the characters sing and dance. If theater is meant to surprise us, then like the stage version of "Almost Famous," "Back to the Future" slavishly follows its source material so that we feel like we have seen it all before – and better. [more]