Fan service isn’t just for Marvel movies. It’s also alive and well this season on Broadway, where one notable trend has been the preponderance of movie stars commanding high ticket prices: $921 to see Denzel Washington and Jake Gyllenhaal in a lukewarm “Othello,” or $829 to see George Clooney in the historical drama “Good Night and Good Luck.” Meanwhile, at more reasonable prices (in the $200 range), the streaming giant Netflix has unveiled “Stranger Things: The First Shadow,” a sprawling prequel to its popular paranormal series.
The brand name of Shakespeare is arguably another big draw for “Othello,” though I suspect that Denzel could get people to pay top dollar to see him do “Love Letters.” (The recent starry revolving-door comedy “All In,” headlined by John Mulaney and Lin-Manuel Miranda, was essentially a latter-day version of that epistolary chestnut.) In the case of “Good Night” and “Stranger Things,” though, the attraction is a kind of brand extension: the bargain that audiences will get exactly what they’ve come to expect from a beloved film or TV series, just in theatrical form. In both cases, the shows amply deliver the goods—albeit without the benefit of a good play at their center.
Clooney’s “Good Night and Good Luck” is based on the 2005 film he made with screenwriter Grant Heslov, though this time out he stars in the lead role of legendary newsman Edward R. Murrow. The animating conflict is Murrow’s battle to speak the truth on his nightly CBS broadcast about the excesses of Sen. Joseph McCarthy. The show begins in 1953, when McCarthy pivoted in his hunt for alleged Communist infiltrators in the U.S. government to aim his sights on the Army, leading a year later to his censure by his Senate colleagues and the famous rebuke by the Army’s lawyer, Joseph Welch, “Have you no sense of decency, sir?” We get to see that immortal exchange replayed on a large screen, as well as an excerpt of McCarthy’s on-air rebuttal to Murrow’s nightly jeremiads, which Clooney delivers—onstage but also on that same big screen—with a grim, dutiful crispness.
Luckily, the lavish production around this tussle between a saintly journalist and a boorish demagogue is not merely dutiful or grim. Director David Cromer, working with set designer Scott Pask, lighting designer Heather Gilbert and a finely variegated cast, has devised a nimble, multilevel production that fleshes out the smoke-filled newsroom and studios of CBS. A live jazz band plays through breaks, and there’s loving detail in every nook of Pask’s set, including small monitors playing vintage commercials.
Honestly, it’s gratifying to spend time with a production this thoughtfully appointed and well performed, even if the play on which all this bustling life is hung remains a thin skeleton. The main way “Good Night” takes care of its target audience—middle-aged liberals who oppose President Trump, like myself—is by delivering a stern, moralizing defense of truth, justice and the American way, as Clooney stands in front of a montage of TV moments from the 1950s to now, climaxing with Elon Musk’s Nazi salute. Red meat for lefties, sure, but at least it’s filet mignon.
“Stranger Things: The First Shadow” is different in nearly every way, except that it too builds a lively, arresting production around a stubbornly weak play, and manages to satisfy fans of the show (if my 15-year-old’s ecstatic reaction is any indication). Set in 1959, it follows the arrival of an awkward, troubled teen, Henry Creel (Louis McCartney), and his family in Hawkins, Ind., where his halting attempts at normal high school life, including a possible romance with a similarly awkward girl named Patty (Gabrielle Nevaeh), collide with his escalating symptoms: electric pulses he seems to project from his mind, bloody visions of a horrifying alternate reality, that kind of thing.
The show’s conception of high school, in contrast to that of the relatively well-observed TV series, seems to be that everyone in their teens has their volume turned up to 11. Joyce Maldonado, the character played with frazzled grace by Winona Ryder on the series, is here played by Alison Jaye as a perpetually shouting school play director, and James Hopper (Burke Swanson), who will grow into the exhausted cop played in the TV series by David Harbour, is a wise-cracking bro. Everyone in this broadly sketched world might as well come with name tags labeled “nerd,” “jock,” “theater kid,” etc.
Likewise, Kate Trefry’s script is little more than a tangle of clichés and plot devices; fans of the show will not glean a lot of new intel, just more embroidery on an increasingly gnarly backstory. What we do get out of this “Stranger Things” show, though, is an expertly calibrated thrill ride powered by special effects, both practical and digital. Some of them are the equivalent of cheap jump scares, but others are genuinely haunting: a slow-motion fall as beautiful as it is terrifying, a towering shipwreck appearing seemingly out of nowhere, a ghostly dinner scene at the Creels.
I’ve seen some of my critical colleagues deplore “Stranger Things” as a kind of malign invasion, much as they once feared that Disney musicals would conque Broadway (instead they’re now a lucrative niche encompassing “The Lion King” and “Aladdin”). If Broadway were indeed in danger of being overtaken by theme park theater, I might worry. But this was also an exceptional season for new plays, from “Purpose” to “John Proctor Is the Villain” to “Oh, Mary!,” and new musicals from “Operation Mincemeat” to “Buena Vista Social Club” to “Maybe Happy Ending.”
It’s also worth monitoring the gold-plated celebrity vehicle trend, though I doubt that will become a predominant business model either. Broadway, no less than Hollywood, has always had a place of honor for spectacle and star power. But will audiences still turn out for a buzzy new play or musical with no stars or special effects? I’ve seen stranger things.
