Actor Kate Winslet and Brian Cox join The Pelicot Trial, sold out but free for all to watch

Some texts were never written to be spoken. A police statement has no curtain line; a psychiatric report leaves an actor no subtext to play. That is the material Milo Rau and Servane Dècle built The Pelicot Trial from, and it is why the names now attached to its London premiere matter. The Young Vic has gathered voices audiences already trust and asked them to carry a record that Gisèle Pelicot herself chose to make public.

Kate Winslet, Brian Cox, Ambika Mod and Baroness Helena Kennedy lead the final wave of names, alongside Lindsay Duncan, Suzy Eddie Izzard, Lennie James, George MacKay, Tobias Menzies, John Simm and Indira Varma. The list reaches beyond the stage: the photographer Misan Harriman, the campaigner Ellie Wilson and the lawyer Harriet Wistrich sit beside the actors, and the countertenor Hugh Cutting joins the evening as a performer. They complete a company first unveiled last month, when Juliet Stevenson, Rosie O’Donnell and Adjoa Andoh headed the opening cast, among others.

Black-and-white portrait of Kate Winslet — Kate Winslet joins the company of The Pelicot Trial. Photo: Courtesy of the Young Vic

The text comes entirely from the documentary record: testimony and written accounts from the trial, police files, social commentary and the psychiatric reports on the 51 men prosecuted in the case. In the announcement, the Young Vic frames it as a study of how, in an ordinary Western European town, Mazan in the south of France, men from every social class and age group proved capable of the most extreme crime against an unconscious woman. At its centre stands the woman who refused anonymity and gave the case its defining sentence: “Shame has to change sides.” The piece was developed with journalists, anthropologists and local feminist organisations in France.

Its touring form is its quiet argument. Since its world premiere at the Vienna Festival, the production has played for one night only in Avignon, New York, Lisbon, Milan and Bergen, each time with a different company. No performer owns these words; each city lends them its voices, then hands them on. London’s version places familiar faces from film and television next to people who have spent their working lives on how the law treats women, Helena Kennedy and Harriet Wistrich among them.

Portrait of actor Ambika Mod — Ambika Mod is among the readers of The Pelicot Trial. Photo: Courtesy of the Young Vic

The room adds a layer of its own. The Chamber at London County Hall is the home of Agatha Christie’s Witness for the Prosecution, a courtroom drama; for one evening it will hold the record of a real trial. The Young Vic presents the Vienna Festival production with Eleanor Lloyd Productions and Rebecca Stafford Productions, with support from the Olwyn Foundation for Women and Girls and Rosalind Riley. Rape Crisis and the Centre for Women’s Justice are the charity partners and will offer support to audience members on the night.

The one-off performance takes place on Monday 30 November 2026 and runs for four and a half hours, from 6pm to 10.30pm UK time. Tickets for the room have sold out, but the Young Vic will live-stream the entire performance worldwide, free of charge, on its YouTube channel. Research, text and direction are by Milo Rau and Servane Dècle, with production dramaturgy by Nastasia Griese.

For a case whose turning point was a woman insisting that it be seen, an open stream is less a convenience than the whole point.

Tags: Kate Winslet, Brian Cox, Young Vic, Ambika Mod, Milo Rau, The Pelicot Trial, Gisèle Pelicot, London County Hall