Behind the curtainThe Netflix documentary on the manufacture of Stranger Things: The First Shadowis presented as a story of triumph, telling the creative agonies of the fight against the successful game of the disorderly chaotic process to stage a massive theatrical extravagance. But if you saw The first shadowWhat I did to the New York Marquis Theater last week, the documentary plays something else: the story of how a director nominated from the Oscars and a winning producer of Tony combined to produce one of the worst things I have ever seen on a Broadway scene.
The great art is often born from Growth Mercantilism: before Greta Gerwig takes hold of the project, which would have thought that a film on Barbie was a good idea? But The first shadow Do not even try to hide the fact that this is a glorified teaser for the last season of the most popular show in Netflix – and, at almost three hours and with a price of the ticket greater than $ 300, particularly tedious and expensive. History, as it is, concerns the adolescence of Henry Creel, who, with the help of Dr Martin Brenner malicious, will grow to be the series “ skinless and without zero, Vecna. But while the play claims to give its audience to Foreign things The faithful have an overview of the formative versions of his adult characters, including the single mother dispersed Joyce Byrs, the chief of the police washed Jim Hopper and the bright Bob Newby (RIP), he feels hell of all the directions by a saying to not reveal anything, to maximize the show and minimize the content and the construction of hope tickets. (Nor does this explain why the adult hopper and Joyce were not more about this bizarre child whom they knew in high school.)
Behind the curtain also feels limited by the head dictates of the office. As The first shadowThe original production in London is getting closer and closer to the opening evening, with its script always in large flow and its special effects developed always failing at critical moments, the director of documentary photography, Geraint Thomas, goes from a brilliant confidant who projects and crew calls “G” to a non -voluntary intruder who is moving when difficult decisions are taken. At one point, the novice playwright of the show, Kate Trefry, looks up with a tense conversation with the director Stephen Daldry and the alert to the presence of a listening nearby, then whispers a edifying “spy camera”. Benefiting to preserve the surprises of stage production, the designers of effects of the play, Jamie Harrison and Chris Fisher, keep their secrets mainly hidden, even when they effectively recreate familiar moments in the television series, and although Trefry and producer Sonia Freidman frequently speak of all cases to make blocks of text and restructuring radically.
Nevertheless, there are a handful of moments which, although unintelligible to anyone who has not seen the play, offer clues to the way he found himself as such a disaster. On the one hand, there is the fact that Trefry, who started his professional as an editor Foreign thingshas never written a piece before and generally does not seem familiar to the medium as a whole – not only the production of the play involves its first workshop reading, but its introduction to the concept of one. From the start Behind the curtainShe asked to describe The first shadowHistory, and it simply can’t. (The subtitles transcribe her answer as, “Okay. Um, that’s this, uh … (blabbers).”) She is the internal emissary for the Duffer Brothers, who created the series and is co-credit with the history of the room, but which also means that it is the one that has to interrupt a production meeting and which has passed the game which was the subject of the final season, and a field which was the game that was the game that was the game that was End of the season, and a point of view that has done the part of the part of the season, and a field that was part of the season for the final season, and a field that has played the game of the game that has been the subject of the final season, and a field that made the game of the game which was reduced for the final season, and a field that made the game of the game which was reduced for the final season, and a field that was part of the game, From the season for the final season, and a field that has played the game of the game that has been the subject of the final season, and a point of view that was part of the game. Use it instead in the television show. “Whatever we are going to say,” she informs the group, “it will be like 80% less.” (The BIP documentary on the subject of the potential spoiler as if it were a curse of curse.) In another telephone conversation, she and the duffers seem to share doubts about the end of the conclusion of the first act, which ends with an actor appearing on stage and presenting himself as a familiar character in the series, packs enough dramatic Wallop. The documentary does not reveal the result of this exchange, but it would seem that fans have won this argument: the first act always ends with this character saying their own name, and the public that I am sitting in his approval.
To fans of Foreign thingsIt is not a surprise when this character – who, screwing her, is the younger version of Dr. Brenner by Matthew Modine, played here by Alex Breaux – getting his path in the life of the young Henry. In fact, viewers already know the outline of a large part of what is happening in the room, especially that Henry (Louis McCartney) goes from a clumsy and somewhat off -putting boy to a serial killer with psychic powers, to the torture of animals and finally to murder his mother and a little sister. What is incredible The first shadow is the little expansion of the story, a few minutes of flashbacks to almost three hours on stage, adds. We get a lot of strength jokes between other Hawkins High students, including Hopper Teenage (Burke Swanson), Bob (Juan Carlos) and Joyce (Alison Jaye), the last of which is so Pepy and Garruled, she looks more like a younger version of Lorelai Gilmore than Winona Ryder’s Frazhed Migh. The strength of Foreign thingsAt least in his first seasons, was the way he juxtaposed the modanity of the life of a small town with the increasingly fantastic elements of his intrigue. But instead of playing dungeons and dragons in a wooden basement, the regular characters of the play act as if they were in a production of Bye bye BirdieBrewing any feeling of reality that hunting for a telekinetic sociopath with links with another dimension could disturb.
Of an opening prologue in which the prow of a massive battleship appears on stage, The first shadow Serves a lot of trazle Dazzle: the characters seem to be threatened by ghostly doubles and be thrown into the air, and there are even a few cameos of the Creepy-Crawlies television show. But while Harrison and Fisher are effects for Harry Potter and the cursed child New mixed technology with old -fashioned theatrical magic, The first shadow Do not trust the public to be seduced by people who fall through hidden trap doors, based so strongly on digital projections and screens – so many screens – that you could have stayed at home and have watched it on a laptop. McCartney, the only actor to cross the production of London, does his best with a subscribed role, but there are only many ways of mime of the spasms of the body, and it lacks new ones before the curtain.
If there is a bright point in The first shadow– And it’s weak – it’s Gabrielle Nevaeh’s performance as a younger sister of Bob, Patty, who is also the only important new character for the Foreign things universe. It is not a particularly complicated part, but as the only classmate who sees Henry’s frightening exterior to the tortured soul inside, she has the right to play something that at least addresses simplicity, an honest reflection of adolescent struggles that once made the television show more than a smooth nostalgia bath. Unfortunately, it is the only oasis of calm in a cacophonic production which is so clearly designed in order to make its source equipment that it literally ends with the “Watch Next” button of Netflix projected in a corner of the scene. “When the theater is great,” observes Stephen Daldry Behind the curtain“It can be the most exciting thing you have ever seen in your life. When the theater is not great, it’s really, really, really, really terrible.” He may have obtained complimentary criticism from the British press and even, more confusing, an Olivier Award, but Stranger Things: The First Shadow is not great.
