Stranger Things star Louis McCartney is so new to the theatre he had never even seen a West End show before taking on the lead role in the stage version of the hit TV show.
The 20-year-old plays troubled child Henry Creel, played in season 4 of the Netflix show by Jamie Campbell Bower, and said it had taken around a dozen performances before he could get the nerve to look out at the audience.
He said: “We have standing ovations for all of our previews, the response has been insane, they’ve absolutely loved it.
“That’s all I hear in this production is that it’s never like this. It’s rock and roll, it’s insane, it’s new every single day and the stuff that is thrown at us we are only capable of handling it because it’s an exceptional team.
“Everyone is on their A game, everyone supports each other and that’s why I’m able to do what I do just because everyone is there for me.”
The show, set in the small middle-America town of Hawkins, Indiana, in the 1980s became a huge hit with its mix of horror, science-fiction and nostalgia for the pop culture of the decade and the play Stranger Things: The First Shadow goes back to the 1950s to set the scene in a stand-alone story.
Matt Duffer, who with his brother Ross, created the show said last night’s audience reaction and standing ovation had been “next level” and said using a cast that included several West End debutants was “par for the course” for their work.
Ross Duffer said: “That’s what we always tried to do with the show and you’ve got Winona Ryder and Millie Bobby Brown and no one knew who that was”.
He said part of the success of the show and the play was down to the durability of horror and sci-fi as genres, adding: “As a kid I remember wanting to keep testing the boundaries of what I can handle.
"We would start low and keep ramping it up and it makes life a little less scary, because it’s scary enough out there, because there is something about going to the safety of a play or watching a movie where you know you’re going to be ok at the end of the day but you’re testing fear and knowing you’re overcoming it.”
