Jolyon Coy, Natalie Dunne, Gloria Obianyo, Joseph Potter and Ferdy Roberts have been cast alongside Janie Dee in Speculations, the world premiere Sir Trevor Nunn directs at the Marylebone Theatre from 30 October. Further casting is still to be announced.
Jolyon Coy takes the role of Bobby in Speculations, the new Torben Betts thriller that Sir Trevor Nunn directs at the Marylebone Theatre this autumn. Natalie Dunne plays Norma Jean, Gloria Obianyo is Flo, Joseph Potter plays Lee and Ferdy Roberts is Carlos. More casting is still to come.
Coy's stage work includes Bird Grove at Hampstead Theatre, I, Joan at Shakespeare's Globe and Posh for the Royal Court and the West End, and television audiences will know him from A Spy Among Friends and Peaky Blinders. Dunne played Anna in Nunn's world premiere staging of The Third Man at the Menier Chocolate Factory, which makes this a second new play for the pair. Obianyo won an Ian Charleson Award for Paradise at the National Theatre and was nominated for Best Supporting Performance at the UK Theatre Awards 2026 for As You Like It at Theatre Royal Bath.
Potter comes to the company from Leaves of Glass at the Park Theatre and Much Ado About Nothing at Shakespeare's Globe, with television credits in Interview with the Vampire and Grantchester. Roberts is a co-founder and co-artistic director of Filter Theatre, and his credits include Kyoto for the Royal Shakespeare Company and The Fear of 13 at the Donmar Warehouse.
Janie Dee, whose casting as the investigative journalist Dorothy Kilgallen was announced in August, leads the company. The Olivier Award winner is currently playing Laurence in The Truth at the Apollo Theatre, opposite Stephen Mangan.
Betts sets the play in New York in 1965. Kilgallen, a celebrated columnist and television panellist, is not persuaded by the official accounts of three deaths: Marilyn Monroe, found dead in Los Angeles three years earlier; President John F. Kennedy, assassinated in Dallas the year after that; and his suspected killer Lee Harvey Oswald, shot dead on live television. Her reporting runs from Hollywood to the White House and into the New Orleans underworld, and the connections she begins to see take in Robert Kennedy, Jack Ruby and the crime boss Carlos Marcello.
Torben Betts said: 'I've never believed that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in the assassination of JFK, and I've always found the circumstances surrounding Marilyn Monroe's death deeply suspicious. But since discovering Dorothy Kilgallen and how her investigation began to uncover possible connections between these seemingly separate deaths, I've become convinced that hers is a story that needs to be told, and I'd like to do my small part as a playwright to give a voice back to a courageous woman I believe was silenced.'
Design is by Lee Newby, with lighting by Johanna Town and sound by Gregory Clarke. Wild Yak and the Marylebone Theatre present the production; the pair also brought Tartuffe (Remixed) to the same address this year.
Speculations runs at the Marylebone Theatre, inside Rudolf Steiner House at 35 Park Road, for nine weeks only. The first preview is on Friday 30 October 2026, press night is on Wednesday 4 November 2026 and the final performance is on Sunday 3 January 2027. Tickets are on general sale now.
