Netflix’s Broadway play is an assault on the senses

The Thoughts Flayer has come to Broadway.

I don’t imply the large, spider-like creature of Netflix’s science-fiction collection “Stranger Things” — although that nasty fella is right here, too — however your complete beastly play “Stranger Things: The First Shadow.”

The non-musical present, which shrieked open Tuesday night time on the Marquis Theatre, is supersized and monstrous.

My thoughts? Flayed.

Nothing is left unscathed. Soar-scare noises blow out your eardrums. Blinding lights and raining sparks make you crave Anna Wintour’s indoor sun shades. And there’s a lot billowing haze that on the night I attended, a household within the entrance row sprinted up the aisle after 5 minutes as if their home had caught hearth.

After all, for those who’re available in the market for watching (pretend) animals being mutilated onstage, run don’t stroll.

A few of the blaring particular results in director Stephen Daldry’s dizzying and generally nauseating manufacturing from London are spectacular, although they’re nothing you haven’t seen earlier than. The best one, when an enormous ship materializes magically, sadly occurs within the first 10 minutes. Prime rib for the appetizer, lettuce to comply with.

Many others are theme-park-ride tacky. At one level in Act Two, I half-expected to be sprayed by water canons. However all the costly visuals are in service of a throwaway play wherein the actual villain ain’t Vecna — it’s the writing.

As you turn out to be more and more bored of the cruelly stretched plot, wherein what ought to’ve been a 20-minute TV flashback is padded out into a virtually three-hour schlep to the inevitable, you’re waterboarded by the stagecraft.

Sequence author and producer Kate Trefry’s freshman stage drama is a prequel that provides Henry Creel — the baddie from Season 4 — the Darth Vader remedy. The query: How did a well-intentioned boy turn out to be “One,” the freaky forefather of Millie Bobby Brown’s “Eleven”?

Henry’s journey begins when his troubled household, together with his dad liquor-guzzling Victor performed by T.R. Knight, strikes to Hawkins, Indiana, in 1959. As quickly as the loner (Louis McCartney) arrives within the sleepy city, native pets begin getting violently offed.

Psychic and telekinetic Henry is a little bit of a male Carrie White — Stephen King’s supernatural classroom outcast — besides weirder with fewer layers and no hope. Bloodshed? About the identical.

Curious as to what killed the cat, Joyce (Winona Ryder’s character, performed by Alison Jaye apparently with the identical bangs for 30 years), Hopper (Burke Swanson) and Bob Newby (Juan Carlos) examine the grotesque crimes like hyped-up Hardy Boys. All of the whereas, Henry’s powers — and hormones — get supercharged.

He begins crushing on Bob’s sister Patty (Gabrielle Nevaeh), and their flirtation forces the viewers to endure a mystifying Vegas showgirl dance quantity with pink feathers. It’s the strangest factor.

Talking as a longtime fan of the Netflix collection, the boy’s unhappy story and uninteresting subplots surrounding it are not vigorous sufficient to maintain such an extended sit on Broadway. And for those who don’t know who Dr. Brenner or the Demogorgon are, beware the Marquis escalator.

Trefry, who fortunately has trimmed about 20 minutes since I first noticed it in 2023, tries to convey some lightness to the drear with a cringy play-within-a-play maneuver.

Joyce and the theater youngsters placed on a foolish present, partly, to entice the animal assassin, like we’re watching “Hamlet” and never simply hams. These over-excited high-school college students behave like they’re in a bus-and-truck tour of “Grease.” Although our chorus is unquestionably not “Tell me more! Tell me more!”

What lifts “The First Shadow” out of the Upside Down is the totally devoted and altogether enthralling efficiency from the gifted newcomer McCartney.

He takes a creepy half that’s a number of twisting and shouting and turns him right into a terrifying psychological case research — a ‘lil Hannibal Lecter. 

McCartney, a younger star, appears genuinely anguished as he writhes like an electrocuted ballet dancer. The script prevents the character from ever being a likable particular person, however due to the 21-year-old from Northern Eire, he’s a hypnotically watchable one.  

However there’s solely a lot one actor can do, regardless of how proficient.

The fabric, screechy and heartless, bares little resemblance to its heat supply. A part of what makes the collection work, by the way in which, is the alchemy of its casting. With out the unique youngsters and their Eighties garb and candy bond, the soul of “Stranger Things” is lacking.  

What’s principally left is dumb and Duffer.