‘Stranger Things: The First Shadow’: An Origin Story for the Broadway Stage

If the economic point of entertainment franchises is to generate new forms of interconnected content, then theater is merely another logical outlet for a property, alongside movies, TV shows, comic books, video games and theme parks. So now here we are with “Stranger Things: The First Shadow,” the latest pop-culture phenomenon to manifest into the Broadway dimension.

As far as its plot is concerned, the play that just opened at the Marquis Theater fits neatly into the lore of “Stranger Things,” a wildly popular Netflix series about a fictional Indiana town at the juncture of terrifying government experiments and supernatural forces. This production is big, loud, often ingenious and occasionally breathtaking, in a “how the hell did they do this?” kind of way.

In other words, “The First Shadow” fulfills its franchise requirements in terms of spectacular art direction and compliance to the series’ canon (to which it adds tantalizing tidbits). Whether it is satisfying as a piece of theater is a dicier proposition.

Based on a story by the Duffer Brothers (who created the series), Jack Thorne (“Harry Potter and the Cursed Child,” a co-creator of the current Netflix phenomenon “Adolescence”) and Kate Trefry, “The First Shadow,” written by Trefry, is a prequel to the series. More specifically, it piggybacks on Season 4, which is set in 1986, and tells the origin story of that season’s primary antagonist, Vecna — the teenager Henry Creel in 1959, when the main plot of the Broadway play takes place.

If Vecna doesn’t ring a bell, or if you don’t know that Eleven is better than One, don’t fret: It’s possible to follow the show anyway, and to enjoy it. But it’s hard to deny that audience members who understand those references will have access to more layers of “The First Shadow.”