Hawkins, 1959: a regular town with regular worries. Young Jim Hopper’s car won’t start, Bob Newby’s sister won’t take his radio show seriously and Joyce Maldonado just wants to graduate and get the hell out of town. When new student Henry Creel arrives, his family finds that a fresh start isn’t so easy… and the shadows of the past have a very long reach.
Brought to life by a multi-award-winning creative team, who take theatrical storytelling and stagecraft to a whole new dimension, this gripping new adventure will take you right back to the beginning of the Stranger Things story – and may hold the key to the end.
“We need something a little theatrical.” Boy, does excited Bob Newby (Christopher Buckley) get his wish. He’s trying to solve a staging problem in “The Dark of the Moon,” the school play he and the other kids are secretly putting on in Hawkins, Ind., in 1959. But audiences watching “Stranger Things: The First Shadow” will likely greet the line with a wry smile because immense, intense theatricality is there for all to see. Are the three plot-driven hours of virtuoso, state-of-the-art stagecraft always matched by sustained drama? Not quite. Does that matter? Not at all.
With an opening scene that parks a hulking great Second World War battleship on stage, Stranger Things: The First Shadow wants to make one thing clear. This isn’t a quiet, quaint, self-consciously theatrical little play. It’s a massive all-out event calculated to thrill fans of the award-winning Netflix series with explosions, thrills, and jumpscares galore – plus a little taste of what’s coming in 2024’s fifth season of the show. But with writer Jack Thorne (Harry Potter and the Cursed Child) and director Stephen Daldry (Billy Elliot) on board, it’s also got a surprising level of proper theatre cred for anyone who doesn’t come to it intricately versed in Stranger Things lore.
2023 | West End |
West End |
West End |
West End |
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2025 | Broadway |
Original Broadway Production Broadway |
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