By Aliza Billet, Senior Arts and Culture Editor
Anyone who knows anything about modern television has heard of the hit Netflix series Stranger Things. Premiering on the streaming service in 2016, the horror/sci-fi/drama has been slowly releasing more seasons for almost a decade now, with the series finale slated for release in November of this year.
Set in the 1980s, Stranger Things follows four friends in Hawkins, Indiana, a town dealing with the fallout of top-secret experiments run by a nearby lab. The show’s content is more complicated than can be summed up in a few sentences — it contains supernatural elements, monsters and an alternate dimension — but the main takeaway is that it is an excellent show with fantastic acting, writing, directing and special effects. Many critics consider it to be one of the best TV shows of all time, and it is highly worth the watch.
That being said, what you may not have heard of is a stage play called Stranger Things: The First Shadow. Debuting in London in the West End in 2023 and transferring to Broadway earlier this year, it serves as a prequel to the Netflix series. Set in the 1960s, it follows 14-year-old Henry Creel — whom fans know from season four of the Netflix show — as his family moves to Hawkins, where… strange things start happening (no pun intended).
I enjoyed the play, but it was a unique viewing experience because as I sat in the audience at the Marquis Theatre, I felt like I was watching The First Shadow through two separate lenses. On the one hand, I was a theater-appreciator watching a play, and on the other hand, I was a Stranger Things fan watching a prequel.
The theater appreciator in me was impressed by the technical aspects of the production. The effects were exciting and eye-catching, successfully carrying the horror-esque tone of the TV show to the stage. Also, despite it being a straight play — meaning a non-musical — there was an engaging and flashy musical number embedded into the story, which was fun to watch.
Louis McCartney, who played Henry Creel, gave a particularly impressive performance in the way he embodied his character both vocally and physically. I was completely sold on his deteriorating mental state, especially as it spiraled wildly over the course of the play. His physical embodiment of such a deranged character barely required any suspension of disbelief on the audience’s part, because of the way McCartney completely became the character.
Burke Swanson (James Hopper Jr.), Alison Jaye (Joyce Maldonado) and Alex Breaux (Dr. Brenner) also gave notable performances because of how much they resembled and behaved like their TV counterparts. The First Shadow is set 20 years before the Netflix show, making the characters 20 years younger than they are in Stranger Things proper. Despite being obviously played by different actors than those in the show, I found myself marveling at how closely Swanson, Jaye and Breaux not only behaved like their TV counterparts — both in vocal tendencies and physical mannerisms — but even looked like them. For this, kudos goes to the actors themselves, but also to the makeup and costuming teams for capturing the essence of these beloved (or hated, in the case of Dr. Brenner) characters.
Stranger Things: The First Shadow was unlike any other play I’ve seen because watching it almost felt like I was watching a TV show. For example, after an opening scene showing the lab disaster that sets the plot in motion, the Stranger Things series intro played, just like it does in the show on Netflix. But the music was ten times louder, the projections onto the stage obviously larger than even the biggest TV, and it effectively got fans of the show excited to watch the play.
However, while the TV-like nature of the show positively engages viewers of the original series, the theater-lover in me felt some moments were too over-the-top. Specifically, the opening lab disaster was not believable in the way it was presented onstage; its staging felt too fake for a theater production. There was also an expository scene a few minutes later in which many characters — all of whom are the parents of characters that fans know from Stranger Things — were introduced, and though the staging was fun, the dialogue and acting were cheesy in a way that, once again, could work onscreen but felt wrong on the stage. Also, it definitely felt as though some of those characters were inserted into the story simply so that fans could turn to their friends and say, “Oh my gosh, that’s Dustin’s mom!” or “Hey, I know those guys from the TV show!” If the purpose of the story is simply to make fans say, “Hey, that’s the thing from that thing,” then maybe the story doesn’t need to be told in the first place.
If you Google “Do I need to have seen Stranger Things to watch The First Shadow,” you’ll find many articles claiming that people unfamiliar with the original show can still enjoy and appreciate this new story as a stand-alone. While it is true that you don’t need to know lore from the TV show to understand what is happening onstage at the Marquis Theatre, viewers who are not familiar with the world of Stranger Things will not recognize the many tie-ins to the original series. They’ll therefore be left confused when faced with a Demogorgon, won’t understand the significance of Henry Creel and Dr. Brenner and definitely will not appreciate the insertion of all those seemingly random and borderline insignificant characters named in the cheesy intro scene. While I walked into the theater as a fan of the Netflix series and therefore felt no confusion at the content of The First Shadow, I do think it would be clear that you were in the dark about something if you watched the play without any background knowledge.
The question is: does that matter? Is it okay for a work of art to isolate its audience by catering to a specific group or fanbase?
I think the answer lies in the intentions of the creators of the work and the message that is conveyed to the audience sitting down to engage with the piece. It is true that a work can be deeper specifically because it builds from a well of pre-assumed knowledge not all audience members will have. You can jump straight into more-complicated questions and plotlines when your audience already knows the basics of your story and its world. However, if creators know that a specific work limits their audience, they need to be okay with and up front about that. It is not fair to present a story as accessible to all and then to ostracize audience members after you’ve tricked them into engaging with it.
So if you want to watch Stranger Things: The First Shadow, go for it. You might cringe a little bit, but it is an overall fun production with some particularly impressive performances and effects. However, be aware that if you do not know the original TV show, it is probably not the show for you.
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