Asa Butterfield (Sex Education) makes his long-anticipated stage debut in a dazzling new one-man play called Second Best, a bitter-sweet comedy about life’s missed opportunities. This playful, poignant story explores fate, loss, and the alternative lives we dream about.

Second Best – The Story
Butterfield plays a boy called Martin Hill who, as a ten year old child, only just missed out on the role of Harry Potter – which would have been, as we all know, a career-maker. Now, as a grown-up, he’s about to begin the ultimate adventure, due to become a dad for the first time.

As Martin tries to cope with the whirlwind of emotions fatherhood brings, he keeps being whisked back to that pivotal moment all those years ago, struggling to stop dreaming about what his life might have been like if he’d snagged the role of a lifetime.

About Second Best
Second Best is written by Barney Norris, based on the best-selling novel by the brilliant French novelist, playwright, screenwriter and director David Foenkinos, who studied literature and music in Paris. His novel La délicatesse is a bestseller in France and his novels have been printed in more than forty languages. In 2014 he was awarded the Prix Renaudot for his novel Charlotte.

Second Best cast and creatives
Asa Butterfield has received nominations for three British Independent Film Awards, two Critics’ Choice Awards, two Saturn Awards, and three Young Artist Awards. He began acting as a child, gaining recognition as the lead actor in the movie The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas. He played starring roles in more movies through the 2010s, thrilling audiences in Hugo (2011), Ender’s Game (2013), X+Y (2014), and Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children (2016). And between 2019 and 2023 he starred in Netflix’s comedy-drama Sex Education.

The play is directed by the ex-Donmar Warehouse artistic director Michael Longhurst (Next to Normal). The Set and costume design comes from Fly Davis and it’s produced by Produced by Simon Friend Entertainment.