‘Stranger Things: The First Shadow’ Opens on Broadway to Star-Studded Crowds

Hawkins, Indiana officially landed in Times Square last night when Stranger Things: The First Shadow celebrated its Broadway opening at the Marquis Theatre. The stage prequel to Netflix’s hit sci-fi series arrives after a sold-out, Olivier-winning run in London and brings back much of the original creative team led by director Stephen Daldry and co-director Justin Martin.

The $35-million production surrounds its 1959 small-town setting with blockbuster visuals: Miriam Buether’s towering lab-and-gymnasium sets glide on and off like movie shots, while illusion designers Jamie Harrison and Chris Fisher unleash levitating teenagers, exploding laboratory animals and a nightmare menagerie of giant insect legs. Video wizardry from 59 Productions stitches the practical magic to an LED backdrop that frequently morphs into the Upside Down.

Netflix and Sonia Friedman Productions rolled out a crimson carpet of nostalgia for opening night. Series regulars Noah Schnapp, Natalia Dyer and Charlie Heaton cheered on newcomer Louis McCartney, who reprises his West End-lauded turn as troubled telepath Henry Creel. The 25-strong Broadway company also features Alison Jaye as teen Joyce Maldonado and T.R. Knight as guidance-counsellor-turned-town-saviour Bob Newby.

Early critical reaction: upside, downside

While audiences gasped at the effects, the first major Broadway review was less enchanted. The critic likened the show to “a jukebox musical mash-up of Grease and Stephen King,” faulting Kate Trefry’s new script for trading the TV series’ noir dread for “feel-good 1950s pop” and a “muddled, pedestrian” plot about a government experiment gone wrong. Still, the review singles out McCartney as “absolutely riveting,” calling his off-beat timing the production’s best special effect.

Other complaints target the heavy use of comic relief—extended rehearsals for a high-school play—and an opening naval-teleportation sequence whose thunder, the review argues, “fails to conjure genuine awe.” Yet even detractors concede that when Henry’s powers flare and the theatre crackles with radio static, First Shadow offers a glimpse of the grand-guignol spectacle the Stranger Things brand promises.

What’s next for the Upside Down onstage

The First Shadow plays an open-ended run at the Marquis, with eight performances a week and ticket prices starting at US $65. Producers report an advance exceeding US $15 million, buoyed by Netflix’s global marketing push. Whether word-of-mouth proves as explosive as the onstage pyrotechnics—or sinks into the Upside Down—will become clear in the weeks ahead. For now, Broadway once again belongs to demogorgons, D-20 dice and a kid who can blow up the school cat with his mind.