After a dance-theatre version of Peaky Blinders and a musical of The Great British Bake Off, Netflix’s Stranger Things is the next TV hit to become a hot-ticket stage show.
A new play, Stranger Things: The First Shadow, will receive its world premiere later this year at the Phoenix theatre in London’s West End. The script is by Kate Trefry, a writer on the TV series, and is based on an original story by Trefry, the series’ creators the Duffer Brothers, and Harry Potter and the Cursed Child playwright Jack Thorne. It will be directed by Stephen Daldry.
Presented by Netflix and Sonia Friedman Productions, the play will be “rooted in the mythology and world” of the TV series which has run for four seasons and won 12 Primetime Emmy awards. It is set in the same location – the small town of Hawkins, Indiana – but the play unfolds in 1959, when Jim Hopper (played on screen by David Harbour) is a young man. It will also feature Henry Creel, the telepathic character who gains prominence in the fourth season of the show.
Matt and Ross Duffer, whose TV show arrived on Netflix in 2016, said that the play is “at turns surprising, scary, and heartfelt. You will meet endearing new characters, as well as very familiar ones, on a journey into the past that sets the groundwork for the future of Stranger Things. We’re dying to tell you more about the story but won’t – it’s more fun to discover it for yourself. Can’t wait to see you nerds in London!”
Billed as an origin story that will “take theatrical storytelling and stagecraft to a whole new dimension”, the play can expect a guaranteed audience from a huge existing fanbase – as was the case with Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, another Sonia Friedman production, which has been running in London since 2016.
Friedman said that the world of the Netflix series was “rich and fertile ground for creating an incredible story for the stage”.
The play, with co-direction by Justin Martin, will have a set designed by Miriam Buether and costume design by Brigitte Reiffenstuel. Casting is yet to be announced
It is not the first time that the world of Hawkins has been given a theatrical treatment. There was an immersive Stranger Things experience created by Secret Cinema in London in 2019 and, last year, the Vaults in London presented the parody show Stranger Sings! which featured puppetry, goofy songs and a dancing Demogorgon.
