Stranger Things The First Shadow review and star rating: ★★★★
Overheard in the stalls at Stranger Things in the West End: director Stephen Daldry revealing just how expensive London’s latest shock fest was to put on. This shiny three-hour-long transplant looks every penny of its eye-watering cost. After four televised seasons the Stranger Things phenomenon arrives to the stage, and the good news is it’s an absolute riot even if you haven’t seen the televised show.
Set in the 1950s, it’s the origin story of a young boy called Henry Creel – who also appears in season 4 of the Netflix show – who has psychokinetic abilities. He was the original subject of what’s known as the Hawkins lab test, which saw children from the town of Hawkins, Indiana, given abilities to change matter and space by using their mind by entering an alternate dimension.
Soon he’s mutilating everything, including animals which are partial to some rather unceremonious deaths. All the while, his school friends are putting on a play and doing pirate radio and all the typical things kids did in a pre-technological era.
Jack Thorne, writer of the excellent Harry Potter show for the West End, bought in Stranger Things TV writer Kate Trefry to create one sprawling episode for the stage.
But the plot is hardly the reason we’re here: set designer Miriam Buether has created some astonishing scenes that will go down in history, like the flying car in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, the helicopter in Miss Saigon and, yes, the award-winning illusions in Harry Potter.
It is a genuinely astonishing opening, where we’re at once under the sea with war-era submariners and then with workers on the hull of some huge battleship taking on otherworldly monsters. There are some equally wowsers moments at the finale which marry technological feat with emotion. Daldry labours over these lush environments, giving us extended scenes with gruesome murders, amazing stunts and unbelievable set pieces to gawp at whether you follow along with the twisty-turny plot or not.
Trefry was instructed to write like she was scripting for TV, and the scope of her story means the plot can go at a speed which omits opportunities for character development. If there is a criticism, it’s that we’re sometimes skimming the surface of a thousand different things, but at least we’re never bored: the lighter moments of laughter with the ensemble pieces at school are as entertaining as the more horrific parts.
Special marks go to Louis McCartney’s Henry who does the best impression of having psychokinetic abilities I can imagine, shuddering and shaking his body at a million miles an hour, a mixture of callous murderer and possessed victim when he says “he wants to be better…but I can’t.”
The Woman in Black has left us, and the less said about the West End’s version of The Exorcist from some years ago the better. Horror and shock on stage has always been a contentious thing to pull off: you don’t want to be gratuitous, and it’s hard to make things actually scary, but if those two things are the markers, Stranger Things succeeds on both counts. Regardless of the TV show, this is the shockingly violent but hugely entertaining show to catch for 2024. And one of the most mesmeric stagings ever in London.
Stranger Things The First Shadow plays at the Phoenix Theatre until 25 August
