By Lucy Komisar
This sci fi play is an allegory of how the U.S. military brainwashes recruits to make them kill even when they don’t want to. How it takes “normal” young men and turns them into killer “monsters.”
At the start, an experiment to make a warship invisible goes wrong. There is an explosion, a fire. A naval officer fires shots and kills civilians.
The murderous instinct appears to be passed on to his son when, at age 8, the boy is accused of being the killer of local pets.
It is ironic that the horror of U.S. militarism is told in science fiction but not in regular media or the “war films” which the Pentagon approves in exchange for supplying very expensive hardware – like ships – the movie production companies need.
Going back, we learn more about The Philadelphia Experiment, October 1943, on the USS Eldridge, under the command of Captain Brenner (Ted Koch).
We are at sea when smoke pours through the audience from a fire on the ship‘s hull.
In 1959 – 16 years later — we see Henry Creel (the excellent Louis McCartney), his mother Virginia (Rosie Benton) and Victor (T.R. Knight) his father. She pops pills, he drinks. Henry carries a small radio, and the static goes through him. It’s a cybersonic wave based on the government experiments
He wants to find the person he thinks is his real mother. In a dream he conjures up show girls with glitter and feathers, Las Vegas dancers.
He is in a new high school. (They had to move from the old school.) He can’t figure out why he is not normal. Something gets into his head. He is trying to figure out if he is crazy or has the devil inside.
Prancer the cat is murdered. Then five pets are killed in 9 days. Birds, and rabbits. A cat is pulled up with guts coming out, its eyes gone. Henry says to a mirror “I’m normal,” the mirror breaks. It’s the paranormal. And Henry/Louis McCartney carries the show.
He attacks a vision of the principal’s daughter, Patty (Gabrielle Nevaeh), with an axe, but it’s not her. It’s a monster. Patty hears his mother on the radio. The principal calls the mother a tramp. Aaah. A clue?
Suddenly, the white-suited Dr. Brenner (Alex Breaux) appears, “I’m here to help.” We discover he was a child on the ship in ’43.
Now in the doctor’s office there is a box with a mouse on treadmill. Suddenly the box is cracked and covered in blood. We learn that someone on board the ship killed a civilian family. Indeed, this about the evil of the military.
We learn that Henry at 8 had fits of rage and narcissism. He went missing outside a military facility in Nevada. We discover later that the U.S. military used a blood transfusion to turn the child into a killer.
Investigating events which now involve the students at school, Principal Newby (Andrew Hovelson) arrives at the Creels’ house. He reaches the second story, and suddenly falls through the floor. Later he says a shadow went inside him. At the hospital, men in suits prevent anyone from talking to him. (Are they from the Agency?)
It turns out Dr. Brenner works at a military base. Henry is told, “The U.S. government is building a map of your blood and body. You are absorbing energy from animals you kill.”
But Brenner acknowledges, “We can’t force him to kill. He has to choose it.” Yet Henry is no longer a boy, he’s a weapon. Property of U.S. government. As are all who enlist or are conscripted.
We will see Henry in the hospital, giving his blood to children who will be the new killers.
There’s a lot of funny and surreal stuff in the play, visuals, ominous music, a silvery monster coming down from above.
But, you cannot miss that this is an allegory of U.S. military programming ordinary people to be killers. Out of curiosity I checked the reviews in the NYTimes and Washington Post. Neither mentioned the obvious theme of the play. They never actually said what it was about. Reading their reviews, I wouldn’t want to see this. Looks like something for addled teens. But I like political plays and I’m very glad I saw this one. I included the details above so the readers of this review can appreciate what it’s really about.
Consider each of the murdered pets worth about a million people exterminated in the U.S. wars against countries of the Middle East and Asia. So this play is bizarre. But also horrific. Kill, kill, kill.
“Stranger Things: The First Shadow.” Original story by The Duffer Brothers, Jack Thorne & Kete Trefry. Based on Netflix series. Directed by Stephen Daldry. Marquis Theatre, 210 West 46th Street, NYC. Runtime 2hrs45min. Opened April 22, 2025. Open run.