Lost All Black Keith Murdoch has been cast but the call remains out for a Lin Colling.
Dunedin director Andrew McKenzie is working to present the play Finding Murdoch at Globe Theatre in June.
The casting is nearly complete.
Of the six actors needed, five have been found including the main character, former Otago and All Black rugby player Keith Murdoch.
Actor Craig Storey, of Dunedin, will play Murdoch and Channel 39’s The South Today news presenter is nervous about tackling the tall role.
"Murdoch’s got seven inches on me and I’m conscious of that."
Despite his concerns, he was drawn to playing "the simple, complex, sure and likeable character".
The career of the reclusive All Black ended controversially.
He scored the All Blacks’ only try in its 1972 win against Wales in Cardiff, but later that night he punched a security guard at a hotel.
He was sent home from the tour by team management and became the first All Black to be sent home from a tour.
Rather than returning to rugby in New Zealand, Murdoch moved to the Australian outback where he has lived ever since.
Many New Zealanders believed the "punishment did not befit the crime", Mr McKenzie said.
"It’s like a wound that has not been healed with New Zealand."
Some believed the media coverage of the incident was sensationalised and put pressure on management to act.
Some media reported Murdoch threw the guard down a flight of stairs and then threw a wardrobe after him.
"There were exaggerations."
The play was written by Margot McRae, a television reporter who tracked Murdoch down in Australia in 1990.
The play premiered in Wellington in 2007 but has never been performed in Dunedin.
The only cast member remaining to be cast is halfback Lin Colling, who also represented Otago and New Zealand, and was on the 1972 northern hemisphere tour.
"If you know anyone with a nice halfback physique, in their late 40s, with a penchant for acting, let us know," Mr McKenzie said.
