Milo Rau and Servane Dècle's The Pelicot Trial is not a play in any conventional sense. It is a four-hour verbatim staging of the courtroom proceedings against Dominique Pelicot and the 51 men convicted of raping Gisèle Pelicot while she was drugged unconscious by her husband over nearly a decade. The production uses thousands of pages of journalists' notebooks as its script. There are no scenes, no costumes, no set in the traditional sense. There are facts. The London performance — one night only, November 2025, at County Hall — is being produced by the Young Vic under artistic director Nadia Fall. The cast of 27 actors will rehearse together exactly once, a structural constraint that enables the production to recruit high-profile performers available for a single evening. Fall describes the experience as 'jaw-dropping, harrowing, really emotional' and expects an immediate sellout. Full cast announcement and ticket sales are weeks away. Rau is no stranger to courtroom theatre. The Swiss director has staged the Moscow trial of Pussy Riot and the trial of Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu. But The Pelicot Trial operates differently from docudrama or dramatisation. It makes no argument beyond the testimony itself. The audience witnesses what was said in court, at length, in real time. 'It is more of a political act really, than a play,' Rau says — and the distinction matters. The production has toured at least 15 countries and been performed in languages Rau says he barely understands. The claim the creators make — and the uncomfortable evidence supports — is that the material is universally legible. 'Sadly it is a universal experience,' Rau says. 'It would be better for humanity if this was just a French experience.' Gisèle Pelicot herself attended the New York performance, reportedly telling the team: 'The actress was doing better than I did on trial.' What makes the piece interesting as theatre — rather than just as activism — is its formal commitment to duration and testimony. Four hours. No compression, no dramaturgical arc imposed on the material. Audiences are told they can leave and return; almost nobody does. The form is the argument: that sustained witness is itself a moral and political act, that attention is not passive. This is closer to the marathon readings of names at memorial events than to courtroom drama. The gender imbalance in the audience is notable and acknowledged. Dècle says the majority of attendees have been women and wishes more men would see it. The production's focus on the male perpetrators — who they were, how ordinary many appeared — is reportedly its most disquieting element. Fall frames Pelicot's story as one of 'resilience and courage and a radical joy,' but the play itself apparently resists that redemptive framing in favour of something more demanding: the unedited record. Gisèle Pelicot waived her anonymity so the trial would be public. She agreed to the play for the same reason. 'We always say she opened the door, and we just keep it open,' Rau says. Whether one night in London keeps it open or merely gestures at the idea is the question the production will have to answer in the room.
