Broadway’s Stranger Things show made me like Stranger Things again

I have a love-hate relationship with Stranger Things. Like many of my friends, I was fully charmed by the first season, but each subsequent season has filled me with growing frustration. The series touches on so many elements that cater to me specifically, like coming-of-age narratives threaded in with supernatural hijinks. But as Stranger Things’ scope has grown, all that good stuff has been buried by extra plot elements and increasingly puzzling character directions.

So I went into the Broadway prequel Stranger Things: The First Shadow doubting that I’d enjoy it. After all, is a prequel about Henry Creel, the boy who would become Vecna, really necessary? I’d heard good things about the stage show’s special effects, but I wasn’t sure that was enough to melt my frosty feelings toward Stranger Things.

But against all odds, Stranger Things: The First Shadow totally pulled me in. As advertised, the special effects are pretty damn spectacular, but The First Shadow also captures the charm and intrigue that marked the show’s first season by focusing specifically on a small group of teenagers and some pretty terrifying thrills. It reminded me exactly why I liked Stranger Things in the first place.

[Ed. note: This post contains some setup spoilers for Stranger Things: The First Shadow.]

Penned by Kate Trefry (who writes on the Netflix show), The First Shadow takes place in 1959, 24 years before the first season of Stranger Things. Young Henry Creel (Louis McCartney) has just moved to Hawkins, Indiana, with his family. His parents hope this will be a fresh start for him, especially after a violent incident in their previous hometown that left a neighbor kid blinded.

Henry attends Hawkins High School, where he meets a slew of familiar characters, like Joyce (Alison Jaye), Hopper (Burke Swanson), and Bob Newby (Juan Carlos), as well as a smattering of other vaguely identifiable names. (Scanning the cast list, you can pretty much find the parents of every major younger character in the Netflix show, including my fave, Eddie Munson.) Notably, Henry meets Patty Newby (Gabrielle Nevaeh), Bob’s adopted sister, and the two strike up a fast friendship, bonded by their love of the radio adventure series Captain Midnight, and also the fact that they’re both outcasts who feel like their families don’t want them.

The First Shadow works so well because, much like the first season of the show, it focuses on a core group of teenagers and gives equal weight to both their more mundane problems and the paranormal conflicts. The balance makes the fantastical elements hit harder when the high stakes of Henry’s increasingly disturbing nightmares, the slow creep of the nightmarish parallel dimension the Upside Down into the real world, and the murders of various neighborhood pets are juxtaposed against more grounded issues, like Joyce putting on a renegade theater production, Hopper’s and Patty’s struggles with their parents, and various budding teenage crushes. Henry’s descent into the Upside Down is more emotional when we see a glimpse of what his life could’ve been without the supernatural pulling him into darkness: shyly sitting at a soda shop with his crush, and helping her find her mysterious mother.

The loss of those possibilities makes Henry’s eventual corruption all the more tragic, especially once Dr. Brenner (Alex Breaux) enters the scene, obsessed with turning him into a living weapon. Of all the characters translated from screen to stage, Dr. Brenner is probably the least effective, since his brand of cold calculation from the show gets lost in Breaux’s more bombastic, outwardly aggressive portrayal. But the scenes in his lab are particularly chilling, and McCartney uses his physicality so effectively, writhing and squirming in pain as he struggles to control his destructive powers.

That struggle turns up the terror of the show, starting from whispered rumors about Henry’s past and the crackling electricity every time he gets emotional, and slowly building up to some truly frightening climaxes. Perhaps it’s the darkened theater environment, and the way everything happened in real time in front of me, but First Shadow’s horror feels far more intense than the Netflix show. Watching Vecna break all the bones in Chrissy Cunningham’s body is scary on screen, but watching the same thing happen onstage to Henry’s mother is chilling. It’s right there in front of you, not viewed through the safety of a computer screen. And instead of relying on up-close grossness (hello, fleshy goo from season 3), the Broadway show is more about building dread that coalesces into pure fright.

Making Henry Creel a sympathetic character is bound to be divisive, especially since season 4 painted him solely as a misanthrope, even before the Upside Down warped him into a power-hungry murderer. But personally, I became way more invested in him. We already know how his story ends, but watching him struggle against corruption, and watching everyone in his life almost help him, but ultimately fail, is intriguing. So much of the Upside Down is black and white in its approach to evil — there are monsters there, and they like to kill and eat people. Giving Vecna deeper roots in the real world and more shades of sympathy turns him from a Generic Bad Guy (albeit with some pretty sinister abilities) into an actual fleshed-out character.

And seeing a new side of the adult characters in Stranger Things colors the world of Hawkins, Indiana, even more. It adds some nice flavor to existing characters, but because they’re all mostly minor players, it doesn’t fall into the prequel syndrome of giving every plot detail from the original a needlessly weighty backstory.

Yes, there are a few contrived elements. For instance, the drama production that brings all the characters together seems a little forced, though Joyce’s passion for theater and her big dreams of getting a scholarship to university and leaving Hawkins are compelling additions to what we know about her. In the show, she’s pretty much a perpetually stressed mom with little else going for her besides how much she loves her kids. But First Shadow shows us that she had dreams once, giving us more perspective on her character.

Sometimes the show gets too wink-wink nudge-nudge for my own tastes, like when someone actually utters the words “Bob Newby, superhero.” But for the most part, I could excuse the contrived elements because they all ended up working together. (Or, in the case of “Bob Newby, superhero,” they’re easy enough to dismiss.) Joyce, Hopper, and Bob get the most development outside of Henry, which makes sense for their characters, gives them more depth, and adds some delicious texture to their current relationships on the show. (RIP Bob Newby, superhero.)

Allegedly, First Shadow is supposed to augment the upcoming fifth season of Stranger Things without being a prerequisite for viewers. We’ll have to see just how that ends up playing out. But for now, against my better judgment, I’m hooked back into Stranger Things as a franchise. I stepped out of the theater swept away by the show’s vision of teenagers getting into increasingly dangerous supernatural situations while dealing with their own familiar dramas, and I’m properly scared again by the terror of the Upside Down, instead of just grossed out. I have a feeling the Netflix show, with its ever-increasing stakes and baffling insistence on taking characters to Russia, will let me down in its last season. But First Shadow gave me a glimmer of hope. Dammit. I guess I’m excited about season 5 now.

Stranger Things: The First Shadow is currently playing at Broadway’s Marquis Theater in New York City, with tickets available for purchase on the website. There is no current end date for the show. Stranger Things season 5 is set to hit Netflix later this year.