Last week Stranger Things: The First Shadow scooped many Tonys, after transferring to Broadway from the West End. Directed by Stephen Daldry, it’s a genius horror-musical prequel to the Netflix hit, centred around Henry Creel — the future Vecna — who’s played in London at the Phoenix Theatre by Louis Healy.
He describes the story as, “How Henry Creel became the villain that we all know in the series. Henry as a boy was a quiet, troubled kid, and without giving away too much, was living in Nevada before his family moved to Hawkins, Indiana.
“He was an outdoorsy kid who liked exploring and playing with his imagination. One day he was out doing one of his usual explorations, looking around caves near where he lived, and he came across a suspicious individual carrying a suspicious box with a suspicious matter inside. One way or another, this, makes its way into Henry and that sort of starts his journey of realising he may or may not have some kind of telekinetic powers that he has to add on to his 14 year old troubles. The parents moved from Nevada to Hawkins, put Henry into Hawkins High School, and the story unfolds.”
And unfolds in the most spectacular manner. Truly, this show is a real blockbuster, with jaw-dropping special effects, genius jump scares, and enough Easter Eggs and back story to keep Stranger Things fans busy over repeat visits.
And as for Healy, the 24-year-old’s performance as the ultimate high-school outsider is outstanding, part-George McFly, part-Freddie Krueger, combining physical transformations, emotional extremes and magic tricks. It looks knackering and incredibly precise.
“It is extremely precise with a lot of that stuff, yeah,” he says, “And at first it felt really daunting to be like, if I’m 30 centimeters too far that way, no one's gonna be able to see this. There's a lot of trickery. But once it gets into your body, it becomes just, part of the show and we've got an incredible team to help if I need it.
“Especially because Henry is on stage so often, most of the time if I come off stage, I usually have to quite literally run to the next point and get changed and then go straight back on stage. So there was a couple of times early on where I would end up in the wrong place and someone would be looking at me, and I’d be like, ‘I'm in the wrong place, aren't I?’”
However, mid-way through a 14-month run, he’s bearing up. “I was doing cardio as prep, but since we started, I don’t need to work out, I burn about 700 calories a night,” he says. “It means I can eat what I want when I want. I might only have a few more years where I can get away with that, so I’m really making the most of it. We’re talking a bit of Deliveroo here every night.”
“Here” is a very swanky pad, which turns out to belong not to him, but to his brother Matty — as in Matty Healy, from The 1975. Yes, Denise Welch and Tim Healy have another performing son, who says: “My earliest memory is watching my dad in Billy Elliot, which Stephen Daldry actually directed back in 2005. I was hyper-exposed to it all. I was a little shit when I was a kid but my parents like to say I had a big imagination.”
Louis is 12 years younger than Matty and says of their relationship: “There’s such an age gap we didn’t compete or bicker … I mean a 17-year-old isn’t going to argue with a five-year-old, apart from: ‘Get out of my room!’” This has allowed Louis to grow outside of the shadow of his rock star brother. Having made his stage debut at 13 in The Full Monty, he has worked steadily on screen and clearly has something special, a certain edge.
Coming into such a high profile show with a massive Netflix fanbase was certainly daunting for him, though, it was a challenge he had to face down.
“I went into the rehearsal process feeling, to be perfectly honest, scared, apprehensive, wasn't really sure what I was going to do,” he says, “But because I knew that I had such a long time to rehearse, I tried to go in as an open book. I didn't want to go in with too many of my own ideas about what I was going to do because I knew that I was going to be working with the most incredible team of creatives and directors like Stephen Daldry and Justin Martin, who were just incredible, and our associate director Anna Girvan, who was with us every single day.
“They had worked on the show for the year before and had so many wonderful ideas that they brought to me and just let myself discover it day by day.”
Although he studied the mannerisms of Jamie Campbell Bower — who played Creel in the show — the breakthrough came when he landed on a version of the character that felt true to himself, that allowed him to get a serious handle on him.
“It probably wasn't until about maybe the 3rd or 4th week of rehearsals where I was really like, OK, this is how I'm gonna play it. When you read the script, Henry's very much the High School loser type, but I still felt like there was room for him to be an endearing sweet kid who the audience are on side with. Even though he's doing some pretty bad things throughout the course of the play, I wanted the audience to still be rooting for him.
“You know, he just wants to be normal, he just wants to go to prom with his girlfriend and have all of those normal experiences, but he has all that ripped away from him. That was really important to me, to find that balance of wanting to scare the shit out of everyone while still having the audience wanting him to be okay.”
Matty has been to see Louis perform a few times and loved it, quizzing him on the special effects: “He was like, ‘I need to know how this is done, I want to steal the ideas for our next tour’.” Then Louis can’t resist a classic little brother wind-up: “It feels good. Like it’s my time.” As if addressing Matty, he adds: “The amount of times I’ve been backstage at your shows, watching everyone praise you. Yeah, you’re very good, but let’s get a bit of Healy number two. Some might say the better one. Some might say better looking. Some might say more talented … Those people are me.”
Stranger Things: The First Shadow is at the Phoenix Theatre now
