Stranger Things: The First Shadow review – Monstrous double visions, flying cats and exploding rats… This show is thrillingly done, writes LUKE JONES
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Stranger Things: The First Shadow
Phoenix Theatre, London
Rating: 
Barely five minutes into this show, a punchy blast of smoke whooshes through my hair – and supernatural fragments drift from the ceiling and into my gin & slim.
I’d just got out of my coat before there are gunshots, a screaming toothy monster and a giant sinking warship. But I settle down, confident I’m in safe theatrical hands.
Yes, it’s Netflix milking a brand. Yes, it’s the West End indulging in a screen favourite instead of promoting something new.
But it’s thrillingly done – magic and dramatic.
For Stranger Things virgins, or those who enjoyed the show and forgot it (me), this is very handily a prequel. I heard superfans ‘ah-ha’ at references that passed me by. But newbies are well catered for.
I’d just got out of my coat before there are gunshots, a screaming toothy monster and a giant sinking warship. But I settle down, confident I’m in safe theatrical hands
Barely five minutes into this show, a punchy blast of smoke whooshes through my hair – and supernatural fragments drift from the ceiling and into my gin & slim
Did I fully understand the plot? Absolutely not. Did it matter? Also no. We’re in the States, in the small town of Hawkins, in the late fifties. Young Henry Creel has moved here with his family.
The nosebleed-inducing visions of another world quickly mark him out as not quite right. Classic puberty this is not. Everything goes up a gear when he befriends Patty Newby and they’re cast as lovers in the school play.
The beast stalking Henry’s alternative dimension soon goes from haunting to killing and the teenage versions of Joyce, Hopper and Lonnie (seen as adults in the TV series) set about investigating the deaths.
At one point they use the school play to trap a suspect (a Hamlet reference I could loudly ‘ah-ha’ to… one up on the superfans).
Every penny of your exorbitant ticket price is there on stage. There’s a Vegas dream sequence, a flying cat that meets a sticky end, an exploding rat, terrifying slow motion falls. Bodies shoot through the ceiling, single characters appear twice before you.
Things could not be stranger. In one moment you see an actor’s sweet face… then, with one turn of the head, they become monstrous and bloody. It’s deft and dazzling.
Searching: Isabella Pappas as Joyce, Oscar Lloyd as Hopper and Chris Buckley as Bob Newby, right
This could feel like a theme park ride were it not for a witty script by Kate Trefry and outstanding lead performances. Ella Karuna Williams as Patty and Louis McCartney as Henry are (unbelievably) making their professional stage debuts.
They brilliantly embody painful lives. McCartney nails the cold but terrified look of a disturbed child trying to fight his way out of it.
Stephen Daldry, having directed The Crown and Billy Elliot, marries Netflix largesse with West End substance. ‘Prepare to excite your inner 14-year-old,’ he said to me pre-show, helping himself to the bar like he owned the place. If this goes down well, he probably will.
A nimble set with a revolve keeps things pacey and almost televisual, albeit three hours long. I flagged a couple of times. But the spectacle is an exciting reminder of what theatre, at its most magical, can do.
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