Adrian Lester, Katie Leung, Rosie Sheehy, Kadiff Kirwan and Aysha Kala have each taken a single, unrehearsed night opposite Tim Crouch in An Oak Tree at The Other Palace.
Kadiff Kirwan is first of the new group to step in, on 21 October. Known on screen for Slow Horses and Fleabag, and on stage most recently for the RSC's The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, he arrives at An Oak Tree the way every guest does: without having read a page of it.
Adrian Lester follows on 3 November. He won an Olivier for playing Bobby in Company, earned a Tony nomination for The Lehman Trilogy on Broadway, and has lately been seen in Sky's Ponies. Aysha Kala, whose National Theatre work includes The Motive and the Cue and The Father and the Assassin, takes 5 November.
Rosie Sheehy plays on 7 November. She has picked up two Olivier nominations in successive years, for Machinal in 2025 and for Guess How Much I Love You at the Royal Court in 2026. Katie Leung, currently in the fourth season of Bridgerton and last on a London stage in The Comeuppance at the Almeida, completes the group on 12 November.
Crouch first staged the play in 2005, and its rule has never changed. He shares the stage each night with a second actor who has neither seen nor rehearsed the script, so no two performances run the same way. More than 350 performers have taken the challenge over the past two decades, in upwards of 19 countries. Crouch directs with Karl James and Andy Smith, with music by Pete Gill, Simon Crane at the piano and casting by Naomi Downham.
The five join more than twenty guests named in earlier rounds of casting, among them Juliet Stevenson, Olivia Williams, Reece Shearsmith and Gemma Whelan. Suranne Jones has the final performance, on 15 November.
The production is one of three in Francesca Moody Productions' season at the venue. Garry Starr: Classic Penguins begins on 22 October, and Feeling Afraid As If Something Terrible Is Going To Happen, with Steven Webb, follows from 19 November. Twenty seats at every performance across the season are priced at £20.
An Oak Tree is booking now at The Other Palace until 15 November 2026.
