A great roar of approval rolls around the Marquis Theatre. What has the audience seen to create such fervor?
The answer is the rolling opening credits of “Stranger Things,” the Netflix horror-nostalgia sci-fi series that has been a monster hit since its creators, the Duffer Brothers, first hooked Middle America in 2016.
At that moment, a person who loves Broadway theater and adores its creativity and singularity surely was justified throwing up their hands in capitulation to the phenomenally successful streaming service whose stock has been rising even as the rest of Wall Street is in the tank.
To paraphrase E.L. Doctorow’s ‘Ragtime,” we are all Netflix now.
You’ve heard of peak TV. The Broadway arrival of a live (mostly) “Stranger Things” has to be the peak fusion of TV and theater.
Those who want to extend franchises have two choices: sequels or prequels. “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child,” which shares an an adapter with this project in Jack Thorne (“Adolescence”), went the former route, cleverly revealing secrets and ambiguities previously shrouded in J.K. Rowling’s books, sparking lots of “Oh, my God,” at least on the (several) nights I was there.
“Stranger Things The First Shadow” goes with the latter, choosing to explain what happened in the fictional small town of Hawkins, Ind., before Will Byers got abducted by a creature from the Upside Down, an unpleasant byproduct of the nearby Hawkins National Laboratory, a pseudo-government entity, maybe, conducting nefarious experiments on matters paranormal and supernatural.
Since “Stranger Things,” the TV show, is set in the 1980s, that pushes the Broadway prequel earlier in the 20th century, and thus the live show features the prior youthful generation of Hoosiers to the young TV characters. The live adaptation, credited to the Duffer Brothers, Thorne and a “Stranger Things” writer named Kate Trefry, begins in World War II and ends, well, let’s just say pretty much at the beginning of the narrative most of the audience knows. Stephen Daldry and Justin Martin co-direct a show first seen in London.
Daldry and Martin are, of course, talented and highly experienced directors of major stage spectacles, and “Stranger Things” is far from a hack job or mere brand exploitation. It has been forged with integrity, especially in the superior first act, before the show gets trapped in one of its bespoke devices: creepy stuff happening during the production of a high school play. I suspect everyone involved decided that since we were doing “Stranger Things” in a theater and the TV show always trafficked in nostalgia and Americana, the metaphor was apt. But it goes on and on and ends up overwhelming the actual sci-fi action inherent to the piece. To my mind, anyway. Nobody around me seemed to care.
The level of sound and spectacle created by some deft combination of Miriam Buether, Jamie Harrison, Chris Fisher and a design studio that goes by 59 (LOL) is intense. If you don’t care for earsplitting FX coming at you again and again, or dislike flashlights shining in your face, this is not for you. But it’s “Stranger Things,” for goodness sake, and such expectations surely should go with the territory. Paul Arditti, the sound designer, comes up with so many different screeches, bangs and thuds, it’s like the man sat in a lab and sampled every “Stranger Things” sound effect, ever. With thrice the intensity.
I’d venture so far as to say here that I’ve never seen this scale of richly realized horror on a Broadway stage before. Most Broadway horror shows (the intentional ones, anyway) end up less than horrifying. This one delivers all the immersive feels, with new illusions and scares flowing at often neck-breaking speed. You feel like you are getting the primordial orange from which Netflix then squeezed five seasons worth of juice.
In an ideal world, I thought while watching, this show would be able to breathe more, let the audience feel and care more and that we all suffered together from diminishing technical returns, especially in Act II. Palpably, no one around me thought the same.
There are similarities of design with “Harry Potter,” and a few visual tricks that recall that prior enterprise, which in general has a lot more emotional pull than this newer one, which relies a lot more on tech. That said, the two leads, Louis McCartney as Henry Creel and Alison Jaye as Joyce Maldonado, are both emotionally resonant and generally stellar, and both Rosie Benton and T.R. Knight, who play Henry’s parents, certainly know what they are doing.
“Stranger Things” has a 33-strong human ensemble of mostly young actors, but one of the more experienced hands, Alex Breaux (who plays Dr. Brenner), has pulled off quite the coup: he’s not only in “Stranger Things: The First Shadow,” but in the fifth and apparently final season of the TV show. Talk about synchronicity.
I can’t resist mentioning the button on the night: As the final drop descends, you see the little Netflix boxes that rule our leisure time: “Watch Credits” and “Play Next Episode.” A cursor appears, clicks “Watch Credits,’ the drop ascends and the actors bow. If ever there were a moment that fully revealed Broadway’s new dependence not on movies (long the case) but on streaming TV, this was that gag.
Terrifying and brilliant, both at the same time.
