By Matthew Wexler
“If you start to feel confused—don’t get upset—just take a deep breath,” says Virginia Creel to her son, Henry, at the onset of Stranger Things: The First Shadow, the Broadway prequel to the popular Netflix series.
It’s good advice for the audience, too, as it attempts to follow the origin story of Henry’s violent alter ego in the Upside Down, the not-so-pretty parallel universe that threatens the small town of Hawkins, Indiana.
Kate Trefry’s convoluted script delivers not one, but two confusing worlds. (Though she’s not entirely responsible. Series co-creators the Duffer Brothers and Jack Thorne are also credited.) A dozen high schoolers run about, led by Joyce Maldonado (a decibel-shattering Alison Jaye) and Patty Newby (Gabrielle Nevaeh), Henry’s romantic interest, when he’s not trying to disembowel her. Director Stephen Daldry struggles to wrangle it all, leaving us with a blood-soaked mash-up of the Peanuts gang and the Jets.
As Stranger Things’s central character, Henry, Louis McCartney carries the weight of the multi-million dollar production on his slight shoulders, and you couldn’t ask for a more dedicated performance. McCartney contorts, foams at the mouth, and leaps like a Cirque du Soleil acrobat into Dr. Brenner’s arms, who merely wants to clone the teen’s superpowers.
The bloated design elements might work better as an attraction at the soon-to-open Universal Epic Universe. They’re impressive in a maximalist way, though not with the level of suspense from the more pointedly edited TV series.
Whether you’ve watched Netflix’s four seasons or its promotional documentary about the making of the stage play, good luck making any sense of it, as a frustrated dad attempted to do for his daughter in the row behind me. “It’s … it’s complicated,” he sighed at intermission. But at Broadway prices, they returned for Act II. In the play’s final moment, they applauded enthusiastically with the rest of the audience at the arrival of a familiar character. Still, by that point, the evening couldn’t have become any stranger.
Stranger Things: The First Shadow plays on Broadway at the Marquis Theatre.
‘Stranger Things: The First Shadow’ Takeaway
In a review of Season 4 of the TV series, Mike Hale wrote for the New York Times, “The many devotees of Stranger Things have been lucky, because as the show’s fourth season demonstrates, the Duffers’ expertise and crowd-pleasing instincts significantly exceed their storytelling imagination.” But Broadway is a different beast—one that even Vecna might have a hard time conquering.
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