Olivia Williams and Juliet Stevenson join ‘An Oak Tree’ — the play nobody gets to rehearse

The premise of An Oak Tree operates like an authored constraint that generates the play from within. Every night, Tim Crouch takes the stage with a second performer who has never read the script, never attended a rehearsal, and has been given no indication of what comes next. Crouch steers from the front — feeding lines through a script on a music stand, issuing stage directions aloud — while his partner navigates grief, suggestion, and the live weight of not knowing in real time. It is a system. It is, by most accounts, unmissable.

Twenty-one years after its Edinburgh Fringe premiere, Francesca Moody Productions is bringing An Oak Tree back to London. The production arrives at The Other Palace — Moody’s current home venue — with Crouch again at the centre and a different guest artist taking on the unrehearsed second role for each performance. Moody, the Olivier Award-winning producer whose company launched both Fleabag and Baby Reindeer as small Fringe shows before they became global television events, has been among the most consistent champions of Crouch’s work. The logic is legible: find the work that can only exist live, then find the largest possible audience for it.

Francesca Moody Productions has announced a second wave of guest artists for the run. Olivia Williams (The Crown) takes the stage on 10 October. Juliet Stevenson performs on 18 October. Rhashan Stone (Hollington Drive) steps in on 11 October, Sophie Melville on 25 October, Brian Gleeson (Bad Sisters) on 30 October, Sean Gilder (Dear England) on 27 October, and Ria Zmitrowicz (The Doctor) on 8 November.

The previously announced wave brings equally significant names. Sacha Dhawan (Doctor Who; The Great) performs on 23 October, Gemma Whelan (Game of Thrones) on 15 October, Hammed Animashaun (SNL UK) on 29 October, Bessie Carter (Bridgerton) on 16 October, Rosalie Craig on 9 October, Clare Perkins on 13 October, Tom Mothersdale on 14 October, and George Fouracres on 10 November.

The play that generated this roster premiered at the Traverse Theatre at the 2005 Edinburgh Festival, where it won a Herald Angel Award. In the two decades since, An Oak Tree has been staged in more than 19 countries and over 400 performers have taken on the unrehearsed second role — among them Frances McDormand, Geoffrey Rush, Peter Dinklage, David Tennant, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, and Mike Myers. It remains, on any serious accounting, one of the defining works of post-millennium British theatre.

The London run is part of an FMP autumn season at The Other Palace that also includes Garry Starr: Classic Penguins from 22 October and Feeling Afraid As If Something Terrible Is Going to Happen from 19 November. All three productions began at the Edinburgh Fringe. Tickets for An Oak Tree — running 7 October to 15 November 2026, press night 7 October — are on sale now at theotherpalace.co.uk.

Tags: An Oak Tree, Francesca Moody Productions, Juliet Stevenson, live theatre, Olivia Williams, The Other Palace

Olivia Williams and Juliet Stevenson join ‘An Oak Tree’ — the play nobody gets to rehearse

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