Second Best Tickets

Multi-award-winning playwright and novelist Barney Norris has adapted Second Best in London for the stage. Second Best in London has an expert creative team that includes director Michael Longhurst, the former Donmar Warehouse artistic director, set and costume designer Fly Davis (Paranormal Activity, The Human Body), and producer Simon Friend Entertainment.

As Simon Friend said, “I read David Foenkinos’ wonderful novel when it was published last year, and it immediately cried out to be told on stage. It’s a coming-of-age story of success and failure, love and loss, and fathers and sons – as well as the universal experience of plans going awry. We’re incredibly excited about the incomparable Asa Butterfield making his stage debut in Barney Norris’ wonderfully funny and moving adaptation of the novel, with Michael Longhurst directing. A team of artists who are most definitely not second best.”

What to watch for

• The premise of David Foenkinos' book was based on a real-life story from the Harry Potter casting director who told of a young boy other than Radcliffe who was "terrific and very vulnerable."
• Asa Butterfield is a decorated television actor earning the Outstanding Comedy Actor award at the National Comedy Awards for his role in Sex Education.
• The Telegraph's review of the novel said, "As Foenkinos writes, "life has a funny way of working out," through the twists and turns of happenstance. In a society where we often only discuss failure as a precursor to success – those, such as JK Rowling, who fail once to fail better – Second Best says something more hopeful: that to be ordinary is a success of its own."
• Barney Norris, who adapted the novel, has earned numerous awards, including the 2014 Critics' Circle Award for Most Promising Playwright for his play Visitors.