Stranger Things: The First Shadow, Phoenix Theatre review ★★★★★

From the get-go, it’s clear that no expenses have been spared in bringing sci-fi series and Netflix crown jewel Stranger Things to the stage in all its unsettling, other-worldly splendour. It opens a little like a 4D cinema experience: smoke filling the auditorium, rumbles in our seats and video effects from 59 Productions sending creepy motifs from the series cascading up the proscenium arch of the Phoenix Theatre. It’s the jaw-dropping finale to a year that’s pushed the potential for special effects on stage into thrilling new realms.

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With its ta-da prologue out of the way, a writers’ hive comprising Stranger Things’ original creators the Duffer Brothers, their co-writer Kate Trefry, and Harry Potter and the Cursed Child’s Jack Thorne return us to the story’s fictional town of Hawkins, Indiana, where a young Henry Creel (Louis McCartney, perfectly awkward and twitchy) and his family have just moved. It’s 1959 – a whole generation before the show’s biker kids were even born – and a roll-call of Hawkins High School students confirms it’s populated with teenage equivalents of the characters we know on screen as adults.


Louis McCartney and Ella Karuna Williams in Stranger Things: The First Shadow, Phoenix Theatre review. Photo: Manuel Harlan

There’s Joyce Maldonado (Isabella Pappas, a decent study of her screen counterpart), channelling her activism into staging a school play that isn’t Oklahoma!. School leaver James Hopper (a cocky but well-intentioned Oscar Lloyd) is hoping to join the police force, while Bob Newby (a loveable, dorky Christopher Buckley) is more focused on being a bedroom radio DJ than his studies. His adopted sister Patty (Ella Karuna Williams, in a praiseworthy West End debut) – the only unfamiliar face – has questions about her past, and bonds with oddball Henry over a love of nerdy comics.

Henry has superpowers, which are neatly explained in a backstory involving his PTSD-suffering father, WWII and a warship that briefly goes off grid. If that sounds far-fetched, remember how much of series four was set in Soviet Russia. Indeed, to fully follow the stage show, you will need to be up-to-date with the TV series. Earlier villains, like the Demogorgons, barely get a look in. It’s very much Vecna’s backstory, and that of his first mind-reading, limb-breaking, eye-gouging murders.


Oscar Lloyd, Christopher Buckley and Isabella Pappas in Stranger Things: The First Shadow, Phoenix Theatre review. Photo: Manuel Harlan

In Stephen Daldry’s production, the lost, watery world of The Void is vividly conjured by Jamie Harrison and Chris Fisher, whose illusions make the stage appear to stretch back for miles. The warm, boisterous microcosm of Hawkins High School is spookily juxtaposed with the dark, turbulent skies above it and Jon Clark’s lighting is brilliant at illuminating eerie shadows looming over the stage. Videography from 59 Productions offers a drone’s-eye view of the town and lends the production a live action tinge.

It’s not perfect. After an intense, plot-heavy first half, it slightly loses pace in the second as Henry is committed to the care of Dr Brenner (a calmly malicious Patrick Vaill). A late reunion scene is twee and should be cut. And there’s a sweetness to Henry that gets destroyed too suddenly.

Still, serious fans of the story’s richly detailed world should approve of this tightly woven prequel. The First Shadow has a bright future ahead.