Review: Stranger Things: The First Shadow Turns Broadway Upside Down

An enormous ship appears beneath thundering clouds. Snowflakes fall on the audience as the stage fills with smoke. Suddenly a screeching creature appears in a flash of light and attacks a crew member before disappearing into the darkness. This is Broadway’s introduction to the terrifying alternate dimension of Stranger Things: The First Shadow—and it’s spectacular.

Director Stephen Daldry, co-director Justin Martin, and producers Sonia Friedman and Netflix are banking on audiences getting hooked by those first five minutes, which make up one of the most electrifying—and frightening—opening scenes you’ll ever see onstage. It’s a technical tour de force that leaves you gaping as the enormous letters of the title slide across a screen and the familiar thuh-thump of the show’s theme pulsates through the Marquis Theatre. All the time and money that went into the intro seems to have paid off. At the performance I attended, the crowd went wild.

And that’s just the opener. The rest of the show is an intricate (and incredibly expensive) Rubik’s Cube of visual effects and stunning illusions by 59 Productions and Harry Potter and the Cursed Child’s Jamie Harrison and Chris Fisher. It’s an immense production, and the West End mounting, where it opened in 2023, was rewarded with a WhatsOnStage Award for Best New Play and two Oliviers. Get ready to be wowed.

Just how wowed you’ll be may depend on how much Stranger Things lore you bring into the theater with you. The creators of the hit Netflix series, brothers Matt and Ross Duffer, came up with First Shadow’s story with Harry Potter’s Jack Thorne and veteran ST writer Kate Trefry, and they imagined the play as a stand-alone piece that anyone could come into cold. While that might be technically true (the play takes place about 25 years before the events of the series), without any prior knowledge you might find at least some of the show’s goings-on murky.

For those unfamiliar, here are some unspoilery cribs. The Stranger Things series begins in 1983 in Hawkins, Indiana, where a group of teenagers discover a gateway to a monster-inhabited dimension that they call the Upside Down. The First Shadow flashes back to 1959 Hawkins, where we meet a troubled young man named Henry Creel (Louis McCartney, the only cast member reprising his West End role) as he moves into a big old house with his alcoholic father (T.R. Knight), arachnophobic mother (Rosie Benton), and younger sister, Alice (Azalea Wolfe). Henry wants to be “normal,” but he knows he’s not.

Ever since accidentally slipping into another dimension (Stranger Things wonks know it as Dimension X), Henry has exhibited strange behaviors—and potentially dangerous psychokinetic powers. At his new high school, he’s an outsider among his classmates until he’s befriended by Patty Newby (Gabrielle Nevaeh, graceful in a physically demanding role) and then taken under the wing of rebellious drama club director Joyce Maldonado (a magnetic Alison Jaye). Sparks fly (literally) between Henry and Patty when they land roles in Joyce’s play, but when his powers lead to gruesome deaths, he finds himself in the laboratory of a scientist with questionable motives, the mysterious Dr. Brenner (Alex Breaux).

That barely scratches the surface of Trefry’s bloated script, but at its chilling heart, The First Shadow is an origin story of the series’ malevolent antagonist, Vecna. Like the series, the play revels in familiar tropes and scares from ’80s horror and sci-fi films that anyone can get into regardless of prior knowledge. But Trefry’s script provides so much exposition so quickly, with so many sudden shifts in location and plot, that even those familiar with the streamer might end up a little bewildered.

A chaotic early scene introduces a high school full of students wearing colorful Rebel Without a Cause-inspired costumes by Brigitte Reiffenstuel. Most are young versions of characters from the series: Joyce’s mouth-breather future husband Lonnie Byers (Logan Gould) makes an appearance, along with Patty’s nerdy adoptive brother, Bob Newby (Juan Carlos), and future police chief James Hopper Jr. (Burke Swanson), both of whom end up joining forces with Joyce to figure out why the town’s cats are being twisted into pretzels.

For fans, this is Easter Eggo heaven, but even after Trefry’s many rewrites, the story still feels a bit shaggy (at two hours and 45 minutes, it’s 15 minutes shorter than when I saw it in London). A sentimental subplot in which Henry tries to help Patty find her long-lost mother (Ta’rea Campbell), doesn’t help matters, leading as it does to a big splashy dance number that required its own choreography (by Lynne Page and Coral Messam) and music (by D.J. Walde). Talk about feeling like you’re in another dimension.

None of that is likely to matter much to die-hard “Strangers.” More important is McCartney’s intense and powerful performance, which makes us sympathize with Henry even when we should be loathing him. Miriam Buether’s dynamic set—with its revolving stage, trap doors, and surprises around every corner—keeps our eyes moving eagerly around the stage, and Paul Arditti’s booming sound effects, working in tandem with Jon Clark’s megawatt lighting design, have us jumping in our seats. And get ready for some stunning Act 2 surprises that’ll leave your jaw on the floor.

It’s an exciting time for Stranger Things fans. A highly anticipated season 5 is on the horizon (will new character Patty Newby make an appearance?), and series stars Sadie Sink and Maya Hawke are also performing on New York stages this season. The First Shadow, now an integral part of the ST canon, is an absolute must-see for all enthusiasts, and it will certainly inspire some of the uninitiated to binge the original (mission accomplished, Netflix). I’m betting this gateway to the Upside Down will remain open for a long time.