Shane O’Riordan told David Hennessy about his role in new comedy musical Lovestuck, telling Andrew Lloyd Webber what he did for his career and his Olivier success as part of the cast of Back to the Future.
Cork actor Shane O’Riordan (29) is starring in the new comedy musical Lovestuck which this week launches at Stratford East.
Lovestuck is a new comedy musical inspired by true events.
The show is conceived and written by James Cooper, with direction by Jamie Morton.
Cooper and Morton are co-creators of the hit podcast My Dad Wrote A Porno.
Proclaimed “a cultural phenomenon” by The Sunday Times, the podcast has amassed half a billion global downloads, spawned a best- selling book, numerous awards and a critically acclaimed HBO Comedy Special in the United States.
Lovestuck features music by triple-platinum singer-songwriter Bryn Christopher with Martin Batchelar.
When we first meet Lucy and Peter (O’Riordan), she is stuck upside-down in his bathroom window at the end of their first date. How on earth did they get themselves into this awkward situation? And what happens next?
The riotous romantic comedy goes from there in a show that tackles themes of online dating, toxic social media and self-doubt/ self- acceptance.
Shane, from Mallow in Co. Cork, trained at ArtsEd London.
His previous credits include Miss Saigon (Sheffield Crucible); Elf The Musical (Dominion Theatre); Back to the Future (Adelphi Theatre); Les Misérables (Sondheim Theatre / UK Tour); Hairspray (Cork Opera House).
The cast is completed by Jessica Boshier (Lucy), Bridgette Amofah (Cassandra/Miseraie), Marcus Ayton (Reece), Johan Munir (David), joined by Ambra Caserotti (Ensemble), Callum Connolly (Ensemble), and Holly Liburd (Ensemble).
Shane O’Riordan took a break from rehearsals to tell us about the new show.
Tell us about Lovestuck..
“We meet singletons Peter and Lucy who haven’t been having the best of luck in dates, shall we say.
“They end up on a date together.
“Where we first meet them is Lucy is stuck upside down in my bathroom window on the first date.
“The usual craic really.
“It’s all about their story from there and their unlikely love story, I guess.
“I came across the show a while ago.
“I did a read through of the show in January of 2024.
“I got a call from my agent the day before going, ‘Are you around tomorrow for this read through?’
“And I was like, ‘Yeah, sure’.
“So I just rocked up to Stratford East here.
“I didn’t realise they were doing a read through to pitch the show to the theatre so I rocked up and I played the part of Peter.
“It was amazing to meet everyone involved and I called my agent after it and I was like, ‘Here, this show is class. If anything happens with this, I’d love to know about it at least or have the opportunity to audition for it at least’.
“And then at the end of last year, I was doing a workshop and I got an audition for Lovestuck.
“I was like, ‘Brilliant’.
“So I went in and I did a couple of rounds and now here we are, I suppose.
“I was delighted.
“I’m delighted to be involved.”
They must have been looking at you for the role when they got you for that read through then..
“What’s so funny is I did a production of Miss Saigon at the Crucible in Sheffield a couple of years ago actually.
“And Jess, who is the other lead opposite me, messaged to James Cooper and Jamie Morton.
“She messaged the lads going, ‘There’s a guy in Miss Saigon that I think you’d really enjoy’.
“So they came up to watch and I didn’t know any of this was going on until I got the call to do the read through.
“So it’s all thanks to Jess really.”
Does this feel like a real moment and chance for you: World premiere, leading role on London stage, are you pinching yourself?
“To be honest with you, I am more than pinching myself.
“To get to do this, all the superlatives don’t do it justice.
“It’s so exciting.
“It’s my first time on stage since doing Miss Saigon which was two years ago so it’s also a big moment in that I’ve been doing a lot of workshops in the last few years so it’s nice to actually be doing this for an audience.
“It’s amazing, and it’s such a fun, feel good show.
“The humour in it is so silly which is what really made me drawn to it because it’s so similar to my own sense of humour so I was finding it hilarious.
“It’s been great fun to work on.
“The songs are brilliant as well.
“Bryn Christopher and Martin Batchelar wrote the music and then James Cooper, who wrote the show, also wrote the lyrics for the songs as well so the team is class.
“Bryn has had hit after hit.
“Bryn has literally written so many bangers so the songs in the show are great, great hits.
“It’s amazing to be able to sing them.”
Does the show have a whacky kind of humour that is hard to describe?
“It is a bit out there, alright. I’m not going to lie to you.
“The story is, unfortunately, based on true events.
“This actually happened to a poor girl a few years ago.
“It was a tabloid story that she got stuck upside down in this in this guy’s bathroom in the window on their date.
“So the lads thought, naturally, ‘Let’s write a musical about it’.
“However the heart that they’ve really found in it isn’t to do with any of that.
“That’s a moment. It’s almost a meet cute, I suppose, of the rom com.
“The show has so much more than just that.
“That is a comedic element of the show but It delves into themes of social media and online dating and the modern, I suppose, form of dating and how we cope with that and manage it through life.
“Finding love within yourself while seeking love at the same time is the real message behind the story.
“It’s a really lovely story.
“The characters, I think, are really lovable.
“I’m really starting to love the character that I play Peter more and more,
“I find a lot of similarities with him and myself and so it’s just fun.”
You have mentioned some of the themes such as online dating and the toxicity of social media, are they dealt with through a comedic lens?
“Yeah, I love personally when shows have the ability to make you laugh but also in the same scene, make you see something that the character’s going through.
“It’s such a clever way of writing and a clever way of showing humour.
“They deal with it in a lot of silly ways.
“Some of it is super, super whacky and super silly.
“I just can’t wait for people to watch it.”
Is there any show you could describe it as being like?
“You know what? That’s a great question. I’m gonna say no.
“It’s a rom com musical on the stage.
“I, for one, love rom com movies.
“I have been a fan of them for years.
“I think there’s such a place for them.
“I went to see Titanique a few weeks ago. I didn’t know what to expect, and I came out of there absolutely laughing my socks off.
“And I was like, ‘You know what? Theatre doesn’t have to be serious to be any good’.
“There’s so much space for comedy and there’s so much space for telling a story through the lens of comedy, it doesn’t have to lessen the quality of the story in the slightest.
“I can’t really compare it to much else, to be honest, which is a testament to the lads and testament to their writing.”
You trained in London, didn’t you?
“I did. I came to it very last minute.
“I grew up with my sister doing musicals and stuff.
“We always had some ties with the stage school in Mallow, Centre Stage.
“Then for my Gaisce award in transition year, I had to find a new skill and they convinced me to go to a musical theatre class, which I put up a bit of a fight with initially, but eventually I ended up loving it.
“Then they were doing their first show that year, which was Oliver, and they asked me to audition.
“I was like, ‘I guess that would take me on past the length that the Gaisce needed’.
“I was like, ‘Feck it. Yeah, I’ll go for it’.
“And I did, and I got the role of Fagin, and a year later I was like, ‘I’m gonna audition for drama schools’.
“Two years later I ended up moving to London, I moved when I was 18.
“I moved just after the Leaving in 2014 and then I’ve been here since so close to 11 years now.
“It (musical theatre) always surrounded us really growing up but I never really took a shine to it.
“I was always into sports and I wanted to be something along the engineering side of things.
“But I started doing the Gáisce in transition year and I just absolutely fell in love with it.
“They were so encouraging at my stage school.
“I remember one of my first teachers Niamh was teaching us this Les Mis song and it was One Day More.
“She asked me to sing the solo and I think that was one of my first times singing in front of the rest of the class.
“I was kind of at the back nervous.
“I sung it and everyone was like, ‘Oh my God, that was great’.
“It was very encouraging and it kind of made me think, ‘Gosh, maybe I could..’ because I really enjoyed it.
“Then about a year later, I auditioned for a couple of drama schools, and I was very lucky.
“I got into Arts Ed which was the college I ended up going to and it was a fantastic experience, really amazing.”
Didn’t you get the Andrew Lloyd Webber scholarship? Was that an honour? Does that involve meeting the man himself?
“No, unfortunately, it doesn’t although I did meet him actually years later at the Oliviers and I literally said to him, ‘Thanks a million for the for the foundation because if it was not for that, I wouldn’t have been able to go to college’.
“And that’s the truth.
“What happened was I ended up spending four years at college rather than the expected three years.
“I had to get an operation done on my ankle.
“We ended up basically discovering that I had an injury on my ankle that I had never realised I had had.
“It was from playing sports growing up and because I’d never really danced before I came to college, it started playing up a small bit during dance classes so I started to say, ‘Here lads, this isn’t great’.
“We got some scans done and it did show that there was something wrong with my ankle, and it would need surgery.
“I have, honestly, the most incredibly supportive family and you would ever meet.
“My granddad- Bless him, he passed away in 2020- Was so supportive.
“He paid €5,000 for me to get my operation done privately because I was going to wait to get it done on the NHS over here but the waiting list would have been too long and I wouldn’t have been able to restart first year that year, it would have been then following year so I would have had to take two years out.
“My granddad said he would pay for my surgery back home which I’m so grateful for.
“The school were so supportive.
“I told Chris, who was our principal at the time, about my financial situation at home.
“My parents were doing everything they could because before that, I was paying full fees when I started at college.
“I say me, my parents were and I was working at the weekends to help chip in some money for my rent and all that sort of stuff.
“But it wasn’t until I deferred that Chris put me up for this scholarship.
“It basically entailed us having to audition for David Grindrod, who’s a very successful casting director here.
“I wasn’t able to dance because I was in crutches at the time.
“And we had to have an interview with him as well.
“I basically told him about everything that was going on and why I was on crutches.
“And he thankfully took a shine to me and awarded me the scholarship.
“I have to give him such a shout out because Dave Grindrod has been so good.
“Him and his office have been so good to me since I’ve left college.”
Didn’t you also do a workshop with Gareth Malone?
“Yeah.
“It was called Paradise Street.
“Gareth Malone did Who Do You Think You Are? and found that he has some relation to the people who founded the Olympia Theatre in Dublin.
“He said, ‘I’m going to write a show about this story because it is an amazing story’.
“And we were the first people he had ever shown this material to so all we were doing was singing for the week and just kind of like getting to grips with the music he had written and the story he was trying to tell.
“We had a full sing through of the show and some of it was very, very good.
“I would love to hear more of it.
“Some of it was quite Hamilton-esque, we were saying.
“A lot of people know him for his work with the choirs and all that so it was really amazing to just see his writing and be able to make something out of it for a week.”
What has been a real pinch me moment of your career to date?
“Back to the Future was a great experience.
“A lot came with it.
“We went to the Oliviers and we won the Olivier for best new musical which was one of the best nights of my life.
“We tried our best to party even though it was during COVID but we made do and we had a show the next day so we all came into work the next day buzzing with the Olivier there.
“I’m so grateful to have had so many amazing memories already.
“I’m only 29, I’ve got plenty more to go.
“But if I had to pick overall, I think it would be winning the Olivier with Back to the Future when we won best new musical.
“I was with the whole cast at the back of the Royal Albert Hall and we all were screaming and roaring when we won.
“It was an incredible moment.
“We were nominated for seven Oliviers that night and each one that went down we were like, ‘Oh god, that’s another one gone. There’s another one that we didn’t win’.
“And then it got to the last award of the night and we won best new musical so it was an incredible.”
Lovestuck runs 6 June- 12 July at Stratford East Theatre.
To book and for more information, click here.
