If you’ve been waiting for the must-see production of the Broadway season to justify plunking down your hard-earned bucks, wait no more. Stranger Things: The First Shadow, now at the Marquis after an Olivier-winning run in London, is the most spectacular, fun show on the Main Stem in many years and will scare the crap out of you. A working knowledge of the cult-status Netflix series upon which it is based is not necessary. The plot takes place before the streaming TV show begins and Kate Trefry’s intricate script stands on its own. (The original story is credited to Trefry, a writer and co-executive producer for the series; the Duffer Brothers who created the show and directed many of its episodes; and Jack Thorne, author of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, another London and Broadway smash based on a successful fantasy/sci-fi franchise.) 
Louis McCartney in
Stranger Things: The First Shadow.
Credit: Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman
Stephen Daldry and his co-director Justin Martin have staged the complex, absorbing story like a film with smoothly flowing scenes imparting vital information and thrills. But the real stars are the other-worldly special effects and illusions created by Jamie Harrison and Chris Fisher, which rival anything you’ll see on Broadway including a horrifying invasion from another dimension. My theatergoing companion called this specific effect the new and better chandelier from Phantom of the Opera or the helicopter from Miss Saigon. I’m not going to list the more nerve-rattling and spine-shaking moments so as not to spoil your fun, but suffice it to say, look out for crashing battleships, monsters with no faces, and be prepared to scream if you’re afraid of spiders.
Loyal viewers of the show will recognize the basic narrative template. (Full disclosure: in preparation for reviewing Stranger Things, I attempted to binge the series in a few weeks, but I only got through the first two seasons and half of the third.) The seemingly humdrum little town of Hawkins, Indiana is beset with weird occurrences. In the series, it started with the disappearance of a young boy. In the play, pets turn up dead. Gradually, we discover that a dark, ominous parallel universe is bleeding into the bucolic hamlet and a newly arrived, introverted teen holds the key to the mystery. The series commences in Reagan’s 1980s America and, in each season, whatever calamity rises up is defeated by a gang of plucky, outsider adolescents with a few token grown-ups helping out. The play skips back a generation to 1959 and the familiar adults are now the adventurous teens. Both timelines are dominated by the menacing Dr. Brenner who heads a shadowy Deep State lab which is mixed up in every cuckoo conspiracy besetting Hawkins.
Louis McCartney in
Stranger Things: The First Shadow.
Credit: Matthew Murphy and
Evan Zimmerman
