Casting announced for Grenfell: Value Engineering – based on the Grenfell Inquiry

Casting has been announced for Grenfell: Value Engineering – Scenes from the Inquiry, which is set to play at the Tabernacle in London and the Birmingham Rep Theatre, with the piece's run beginning in October.

Ron Cook (The Witcher) is set to play Richard Millett QC, counsel to the Grenfell Tower Inquiry, leading a cast including Daniel Betts, Sam Buchanan, Sally Giles, Polly Kemp, Phill Langhorne, Tim Lewis, David Michaels, David Robb, Howard Ward, Thomas Wheatley and Rosie Wyatt. Further casting is to be announced in due course.

Based entirely on words used by those involved in the inquiry, the verbatim text is edited by Richard Norton-Taylor and directed by Nicolas Kent, and reunites the pair following their work on productions including The Colour of Justice – The Stephen Lawrence Inquiry.

The assistant director is CJ Lloyd Webley, reconstruction of the Inquiry room is by Miki Jablkowska and Matthew Eagland, lighting design by Matthew Eagland, video design by Jack Fone, sound design by Andy Graham, costume design by Carly Brownbridge and casting by Amy Ball CDG. The production is executive produced by Peter Huntley and general managed by Smart Entertainment.

The venue will also be providing in-school workshops and performance opportunities for local students aged 14 to18, with supporters of the not-for-profit play including the Paul Hamlyn Foundation, the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust and Nimax Theatres

Cook said: "I'm so pleased and proud to be part of Grenfell: Value Engineering. An incisive, insightful and important play. I can only hope it will help to clarify our understanding of the causes of this terrible and unnecessary fire, and make some contribution towards avoiding a similar tragedy in the future."

Norton-Taylor said: "What has emerged from the inquiry is an extraordinary catalogue of greed, fraud, cheating and lying, secret fixing of fire tests on their products, subtle layers of corruption and racism, fatal cost-cutting, casual indifference, and practices which one young company executive called "completely unethical" and which some even joked about… The evidence in the Grenfell Inquiry reflects many of the problems deeply embedded in contemporary British society. I believe that presenting it to a theatre audience will lead to a wider understanding of the story behind a fire whose repercussions will be felt for many years."