New York — An eerie, overpowering force has taken over the Marquis Theatre, home of “Stranger Things: The First Shadow,” which had its official Broadway opening on Tuesday.
This supernatural power is from a dimension even more intimidating than the Upside Down. The occult realm of Netflix, the streaming service that ensnares viewers in a maze of maybes, has joined forces with Sonia Friedman Productions to convert a piece of prime theatrical real estate into a zone of franchise extension.
Broadway denizens, beware: A portal into a fantasy universe has been established in the heart of the Theater District, unleashing a breed of supernatural creatures that makes the “Harry Potter” lot seem mild and mainstream by comparison. Disney musicals have been accused of turning Broadway into a theme park. “Stranger Things” hurls the art form into Dungeons & Dragons territory.
The good news is that a younger demographic is making the pilgrimage to the temple of their grandparents’ favorite show tunes. There were so many young faces at the Marquis, I had to remind myself that I was attending an evening press preview and not a student matinee.
The production, directed by Tony-winning veteran Stephen Daldry with co-director Justin Martin, is spectacular in the way that it combines the fluidity of the screen with the dynamism of the stage. The theater proves that it can do nearly anything the cinema can do with the right design team, directorial imagination and technological know-how.
Unfortunately, “Stranger Things: The First Shadow,” written by Kate Trefry from an original story she collaborated on with the Duffer Brothers (the series’ creators) and Jack Thorne, also shows that the theater can be just as careless as any hyperactive action movie when it comes to plot. While seemingly unlimited resources are lavished on visual effects, the drama is allowed to tie itself into impossible knots. (Thorne, who won a Tony for “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child” and obloquy for the Broadway bomb “King Kong,” achieves a Hegelian synthesis with this potential blockbuster of dubious artistic purpose.)
The problem with “Stranger Things: The First Shadow” is that it’s as if an entire new season of the series had been squeezed into a 2-hour, 45-minute stage play — roughly the length of three episodes. This is binge viewing on an expedited, don’t-worry-about-the-math timeline.
I barely made it through two seasons of the Netflix series, so I’m hardly an expert on “Stranger Things.” But I did notice that the Duffer Brothers didn’t worry all that much about leaving storytelling holes even when they had eight episodes to lay out their vision. Here, the gaps in narrative logic are so vast that it would take the most committed fans to fill in all the missing pieces from the realm of online mythology the series has accrued since its premiere in 2016.
The main character of “The First Shadow” is Henry Creel, an adolescent dweeb who looks like Pee-wee Herman but has a malevolent side that could give Carrie a run for her prom night money. Devoted fans will know Henry from Season 4 of the series, but anyone with an ounce of sense will pick up on his sociopath tendencies from the way he buttons the top button of his shirt and stares numbly into the middle distance.
The play is a prequel to the series, set in the same town but taking place in 1959, a generation before the 1980s hairstyles and New Wave mix tapes that made Season 1 such a Gen X trip. We meet Joyce Maldonado (Alison Jaye) and James Hopper Jr. (Burke Swanson) when they’re in high school, having clocked in Netflix hours with them already as adults played by Winona Ryder and David Harbour.
Louis McCartney (who also starred in the Olivier Award-winning West End production) plays Henry, a forlorn misfit whose only real friend is the radio he clutches like a transistor security blanket. Wiry and dangerous, the character is also strangely endearing. McCartney’s shattered portrayal, blurring the line between victim and violator, elicits our sympathy without ever asking for it.
Henry’s parents are hoping for a fresh start after moving the family to Hawkins after some trouble in Nevada. Henry, who has psychokinetic powers and an unpredictable temper, apparently blinded a neighbor kid in a fit of pique, forcing the Creels to skedaddle to Indiana. They want to insulate their son, but it’s the community that really needs protection.
At Hawkins High, the other students sense Henry’s oddity the way sharks scent blood in the water. One of the rich ironies of “Stranger Things” is the way the cruelty of ordinary teenagers is made to seem as depraved as anything in the Upside Down, the alternate dimension in which humans occasionally get trapped and hunted by diabolical forces.
Patty Newby (Gabrielle Nevaeh), the principal’s daughter who feels like an outsider at home and at school, strikes up a friendship with Henry. They wind up getting cast, under strained dramatic circumstances, in the school musical, and a romance of sensitive oddballs blossoms. While Henry tries to resist the dark forces running riot inside him, Patty obsesses about finding the mother who abandoned her, or so she’s been led to believe.
Through his radio, Henry can eavesdrop on people in a way that’s not bound by time or space. He agrees to help Patty find her mother, but sinister things are happening in Hawkins. A rash of brutal pet murders raises fears that a sadistic maniac is on the loose. Henry’s classmates start their own investigation, which inevitably brings them to Henry’s front door.
As the Hawkins High musical gets underway and Patty’s long-lost Vegas showgirl mother zooms into paranormal view, Dr. Brenner (Alex Breaux) and his lab henchmen are vying to take control of Henry in what seems like a secret government plot but is part of an oceanic backstory that grows ever more convoluted. (The play opens with a naval ship under mysterious attack that may have something to do with the origin story of the Upside Down, but it would take a PhD in “Stranger Things” studies to unpack.)
Daldry and his crack production team move from one scenario to the other with breathtaking ease. There was a time when theater artists were encouraged to dig deeper into what made the stage unique as a form — most notably the palpable connection between actors and spectators.
“Stranger Things: The First Shadow” demonstrates that theater doesn’t have to hold itself back from competing with film, television and video games. A play can move not only from place to place but also from medium to medium. But just because the theater can doesn’t mean that it should. All credit to Miriam Buether’s incredibly agile scenic design, Jon Clark’s dynamic lighting and, most especially, Paul Arditti’s spine-tingling sound design and DJ Walde’s ethereally commanding music for turning the Marquis into a mind-blowing funhouse. But what the production really needs is a script doctor capable of a miracle cure.
As Henry’s bad behavior goes from subliminal to gore-fest, the shifts from the blood-splattered lab to the Hawkins boppy musical seem beyond ludicrous. One of Henry’s powers is to prey on the traumatic fears of his perceived enemies, and “Stranger Things: The First Shadow” is able to summon a theater critic’s horrific vision of a Broadway age in which sense is utterly disregarded for violent sensation.
Perhaps the Hawkins drama club is the creative team’s hope that culture will somehow survive the tech apocalypse. The talented cast and inexhaustibly inventive design team make it hard to bet against the future of theater. But the campy Netflix branding reminders, from the series’ unmistakable musical theme to the Gothic scroll of the title to the jokey “next episode” or “watch credits” option that flashes at the show’s end, suggest that there really is an unstoppable force out there ready to make zombies of us all.