Stranger Sings: let my people (and puppets. And Demogorgon) sing
30 Jan 2025 - Photos by Sam Moffatt

The first season of Stranger Things premiered in July, 2016. I binged it the following fall and, as so much time has passed, I googled the Wikipedia summary before heading out to Stranger Sings, the parody musical of Stranger Things. It is a good thing I did. The eight episodes contain a lot of plot and the summary also revived many memories of details and flavour. It also reminded me why I had never got around to binging the following seasons. Condensing eight episodes worth of plot into a brisk two hour musical is a daunting task. However writer and composer Jonathan Hogue tackled the adaptation and was mostly successful. There are still lots of extraneous plot lines, character development and metaphors left dangling or unexplored, but then this is a "parody" so the raison d'être is satire and laughter. Fortunately there is lot about Stranger Things that can be mocked, from its solemn pace to its gratuitous '80s references. Hogue ratchets up the pace and focuses his comic vitriol on Stranger Things' embrace of the politically correct, while also embracing that ideology (this is after all a musical, where the woke are, thankfully, allowed to sing out).

The only time Hogue goes for the jugular is in "Crazy" where Winona Ryder is ridiculed relentlessly. Only a shoplifting gag is missing. And the gratuitous '80s references? Hogue also embraces that and the musical allusions and quotes are fast, furious and funny. There is even a meta Kate Bush moment. Nancy reassuring Steve Harrington that he is as sexy as George Michael is a great gag, as is the "Thriller" dance number. But the best musical gag of them all harks all the way back to 1959 and Styne/Sondheim, laying bare Hogue's Broadway roots. The cast, all fine-voiced and enthusiastic, have been directed to create caricatures and there is much flailing around and attempted physical comedy. Part of that problem is the sheer size of the George Randolph stage which remains barren except for a riser and a few props that are trundled on and off stage. The cast has a lot of space to fill and fill it they do. Director Zachary Mansfield and the cast have devised many inventive ways to get themselves to center stage and back. But most of it has to be done running.

If I had stumbled upon this production in a small cramped theatre, I would have been amazed at the inventiveness of the props and lighting. Unfortunately, in a cavernous former church with a tragically sparse audience, it comes across as cheats that don't quite work. It doesn't come across as cheap because the costumes, of which there are hundreds (every cast member plays dozens of roles beside their main one or two) ranging from everyday '80s casual to full Vandross rips off Liberace chorus. Costume designer Andrew Nasturzio had a budget. Gloriously the wigs, of which there are also dozens, remain true to the era, looking as if they have been culled from the Eva Gabor collection and then styled into a facsimile of submission. The cast is also encouraged to break the fourth wall, to let the audience in on the joke. This garners laughs in the short term but without an emotional center, with only spoofs of the Stranger Things characters, there is little involvement. Except when the cast sings.

Musicals exist to express what can't be explained or experienced without breaking into song. And the comic characters of Stranger Sings are occasionally allowed to let it rip vocally. Though it should be noted that one of Hogue's favourite gags is to undercut the sincerity of a song's emotional core for a contradictory laugh. Sydney Gauvin raises the roof with the underdog anthem "Barb's Turn" and it is heartbreaking, but hilarious, when she has to cut it short with slapstick. The same for the astonishingly limber Jean Blandon who gets a few rich and evocative bars of vocals before being subsumed into the plot he is somewhat incidental to. Perhaps the prime example is that Will the child is played by a puppet (ably conjured to life by Rebecca Rodley). While puppets can, like musicals, be used to express what can't be expressed by mere humanity, in this case he remains a plot device and ultimately a gag. Though it is a great, if telegraphed, gag. Who knew that puppets don't respond to CPR? Apparently FF is much more effective.

Paulina Luciani is an overly jittery Nancy, until she sings, and is a powerhouse once Eleven has been transformed. Dante Toccacelli (Back and Forth: The Musical) inhabits both teen idols with only a wig and costume change. The self-absorbed sex symbol Steve being hilarious until the joke repeats once too often. His fright-wigged Dr Brenner begins pitched at full pratfall and escalates. Alekzander Rosolowski incarnates innocent puppy love amidst the comedy, and Charlie Clements is the skeptic. Duncan Lang plays Hooper (another vocal we'd like to have heard more of) but also fills in a lot of supporting roles. The Marx Brothers scientists are hit and miss (mostly miss) but Lang's first entrance as a horny MILF clad in pink bodes well. He plays her straight, which is the only way to do pure camp even though it can't really be done by straights, and it sets an intriguing tone that is undone when subsequent crossdressing is played for laughs or practicality. And Blandon gets another mention for his work as the Demogorgon, if only choreographer Kendra Marie Brophy had pushed it a little further. 

The performances are solid and energetic, the music is catchy and hooky, and more musicals should feature inter-dimensional monsters and puppets. At intermission I was tapping my foot to the '80s hits and trying to figure out why I wasn't more impressed. Then, in a row, the sound system blared out "Girls Just Want to Have Fun," "Maneater," "I Wanna Dance with Somebody," and then "Holding Out for a Hero." A random sampling of what the '80s had to offer. And it struck me just how camp—overproduced, oversung and emotionally stunted—all four songs are. The '80s are hard to satirize, to turn into camp, because they already are. Once a song becomes background music for a commercial, its resonant nostalgia has been milked dry and it is just a trigger for a misremembered past. Stranger Sings couldn't achieve camp cult lift off because the material was already self-satire and self-referential. I was overthinking (though it is always a bad sign if I have time to think while the show is onstage). Realizing that, I had a lot more fun and even contemplated returning to see how much better Stranger Sings would be with an enthusiastic, and hopefully in the know, audience. But I still wanted the production to let my people (and puppets. And Demogorgons) sing.