A smack in the face of a play

THE exploding rat was a surprise. But this theatrical prequel to the Duffer Brothers' hit Netflix series about the strange events in the fictional town of Hawkins, Indiana, is stuffed with things that go smack in your face.

- NEIL NORMAN

Director Stephen Daldry summons all of his theatrical and film-making powers like a latter-day Prospero.

Together with an army of technicians, illusionists and video designers, he creates an intoxicating cocktail of science fiction and horror that makes Harry Potter and the Cursed Child look like Noddy in Toyland.

For anyone unfamiliar with the series, it is likely to prove a bewildering experience. Due to the actions of a human experimentation facility, an interdimensional hole called the been opened Upside Down has through which strange beings emerge into the human world, infecting them and creating mayhem and murder.