Theatre review: Stranger Things: The First Shadow

Netflix branch out from streaming to producing live theatre, but this new play is a spin-off from their tentpole Stranger Things, so there isn't too much fear that it'll get cancelled during the interval for not getting enough Instagram traction. The TV series is a 1980s nostalgia-tinged sci-fi/fantasy story about teenagers getting caught up in deadly adventures when their small town's reality starts bleeding into an alternate dimension known as The Upside Down. The First Shadow is a prequel that does the same for some of the central adult characters, taking them back to their high school days in the 1950s and making them face the first signs of a supernatural incursion into Hawkins, Indiana. In particular, the play serves as the backstory of the series' Big Bad, Henry Creel. But first there's a pre-credits sequence because yeah, when the credits are as iconic as Stranger Things' they're going to roll on stage as well.

Theatre review: Appropriate

Branden Jacobs-Jenkins has been an up-and-coming name in American playwriting in the last couple of years – I personally liked An Octoroon, if not as much as everyone else seemed to, while being less convinced by Gloria, but it was hard to deny the obvious potential. For my money this is the one where that potential is realised (albeit in a play written five years ago,) as the Donmar Warehouse stages the UK premiere of Appropriate. On the surface this is the playwright’s most conventional play to date, being his take on That American Play Where An Extended Family Gets Together After A Long Time, Preferably At Thanksgiving But That’s Optional. Six months after the death of their reclusive father, the Lafayette siblings and their families go to his plantation house in Arkansas; he was a hoarder who left half a million dollars in debt, so they have a lot of work to do clearing the place up so that his belongings can be sold in an estate sale, and the house and land sold at auction.

Theatre review: Bring It On

Currently in residence at Southwark Playhouse, I’m quite surprised that youth company British Theatre Academy managed to get the rights to Bring It On - given Hamilton fever is still high I would have thought there’d be lots of competition to cash in on Lin-Manuel Miranda’s name. Miranda contributes songs alongside Tom Kitt and Amanda Green, with Avenue Q’s Jeff Whitty providing the book, based loosely on the 2000 teen comedy. Very loosely – I’m pretty sure in the film Eliza Dushku transferred to Kirsten Dunst’s school rather than the other way round and Phill, who seems to have a worryingly encyclopaedic knowledge of its many straight-to-video sequels, thought some of the plot points might have come from them. Campbell (Robyn McIntyre) has just been made captain of Truman High’s award-winning cheerleading squad, when a rezoning of the school district means she and unpopular student Bridget (Kristine Kruse) have to spend their senior year at the rough Jackson High, which doesn’t even have a cheerleading squad.

Theatre review: The Nether

Jeremy Herrin's first show as director since taking over Headlong is a co-production with his old stomping ground at the Royal Court, where he brings the UK premiere of an unsettling American play to the Downstairs stage. The Nether is a future iteration of the internet that's not only highly realistic but also totally immersive. It hasn't quite managed to replicate touch yet but a virtual community called The Hideaway seems to have perfected it. The trouble is that The Hideaway is a community for paedophiles, a virtual Victorian estate where "Poppa" invites his guests to spend time with his children. As The Nether acquires a fledgling police force, Detective Morris (Amanda Hale) has managed to track down the man behind Poppa and his realm, the aptly-named Sims (Stanley Townsend.) Taking him in for questioning "in-world" (i.e. in the real, non-virtual world,) Morris tries to get him to reveal the whereabouts of his server.