Shaun McKenna

Shaun McKenna is an award-winning playwright, screenwriter and lyricist. In 2021 his original thriller Rocky Road was nominated for the new OnComm award, created by the Offies for outstanding theatre work streamed during lockdown. Shaun was one of the core writers on the long running BBC Radio Four series Home Front which won an “Outstanding Contribution to Radio” Audio Award in 2019. His 2012 stage version of Ladies In Lavender won five BroadwayWorldUK awards including Best Regional Play. He was Olivier-nominated and won a Dora Mavor Moore award for his 2006-8 stage version of The Lord of the Rings in Toronto and London. His first episode of the long running series Heartbeat won a Royal Television Society Best Drama award in 2005 and his musical Heidi was nominated for the Prix Walo in Switerland in 2008. Forthcoming musical theatre projects include Are You As Nervous As I Am? in London, She Loves You (with the songs of Lennon & McCartney) in Denmark, the Bollywood extravaganza Anurakti touring internationally and Heatwave, which tells the story of the legendary choreographer Jack Cole, the man who invented jazz dance and choreographed all Marilyn Monroe’s film numbers. Earlier West End, Edinburgh and international musicals include Maddie, La Cava, Lautrec, Only You Can Save Mankind, Murder Mystery Musical, Last Dance, the Heidi trilogy and The Return of Peter Pan. Forthcoming theatre projects include Private Lives: The Men’s Cut, The Forsytes, written with Lin Coghlan, and an English version of a Mexican comedy Thinking Too Loud. He has adapted five thrillers by Peter James for the stage, Looking Good Dead (2021-22) following The House on Cold Hill, The Perfect Murder, Dead Simple and Not Dead Enough. A sixth is in development and will open in January 2023. Past plays include Ruling Passions, To Serve Them All My Days and How Green Was My Valley. Extensive audio credits, mostly for Radio 4 and now available on Audible, include Eleanor Rising, an ongoing series about the extraordinary adventures of Eleanor of Aquitaine, the reinvention (with Lin Coghlan) of five Arnold Bennett novels in China Towns and nine John Galsworthy novels in The Forsytes. These followed The Complete Smiley (with Robert Forrest) starring Simon Russell Beale. Other BBC radio credits include To Serve Them All My Days, East of Eden, Meeting Jack, The Cry of the Owl, Marnie, Brother Dusty Feet and Me And Little Boots, a comedy about Caligula’s horse. TV and film include The Crooked Man, Like Father Like Son, Great West End Theatres, three series of Heartbeat, Doctors and in development, Agent 160 and Oscar’s Boys. In 2020 Shaun published Maddie and Us, the story of his first musical and its seven-year rollercoaster journey to the West End, which topped the Amazon showbusiness charts for a time. Find out more on www.shaunmckenna.me.