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3 hours, long intermission, no stops. I have never seen the movie. 

From a production standpoint, it’s a beast. Major kudos to the design team and Arden. The staging is genuinely impressive, super cinematic, visually striking, and technically dialed in. There are moments that feel big and bold in the best way.

But the show itself… all over the place.

The tone swings wildly. It starts dark and sinister, then drifts into a very Lifetime movie&n

I went again on Saturday, and the performances have only deepened. Just under two hours, but it flew by—it honestly felt like 30 minutes. I do kind of miss intermissions, but including one here would be a disservice. The pacing is relentless in the best way, and that ending wouldn’t land nearly as hard if it were broken up.

What really struck me this time was how completely locked-in the audience was. Obviously it varies by performance, but this was the first intermissi

Let’s start with the good news: nobody tripped over a Demogorgon. The show ran smoothly (if long), the effects occasionally impressed, and there are projections aplenty if that’s your thing. Unfortunately, that’s about where the upside ends—and not in the cool, alternate-dimension kind of way.

As both a longtime Stranger Things fan and a seasoned theatre-goer, I went into The First Shadow hoping for something thrilling, inventive, and emotional