Gisele Pelicot play based on 'harrowing' trial evidence to get London premiere

A play about the Gisèle Pelicot rape case will have its UK premiere at London County Hall.The Pelicot Rape Trial features witness testimony, police files, social commentary, and psychiatric evaluations of the 51 men who were prosecuted.Created by Swiss director and playwright Milo Rau, the one-off event will be staged by 30 actors and public figures on November 30 as one of the Young Vic Theatre’s final shows of its 2026/7 season.Pelicot’s ex-husband, Dominique Pelicot, received a 20-year prison sentence in December 2024 for drugging and raping her, in addition to enabling other men to violate her while she was unconscious in a campaign of abuse that went undetected for nearly ten years.Madame Pelicot, 73, bravely chose to waive her right to anonymity and won admiration around the world when she stated that shame ought to fall on her abusers rather than on her.Gisèle PelicotNadia Fall, Young Vic Theatre’s artistic director and chief executive, said: "Milo Rau’s extraordinary testimonial piece The Pelicot Trial breaks out beyond our theatre walls to County Hall; a piece of confronting event-theatre which bears witness to the harrowing story of Gisèle Pelicot."Speaking at the Hay Festival, she said she never thought she could trust a man again before meeting her partner, Jean-Loup Agopian.She said: “It’s something that I didn’t think, I didn’t think that could happen, especially at my age, first of all, I didn’t really want to (fall in love), but life decided otherwise.“We met, our trajectories crossed at one moment and I met this young man of 73… You see, you can fall in love at any age, it happened to me, it can happen to you, I’m convinced of it.“I didn’t think that I’d be able to trust a man, but it’s what happened to me, so you see that everything can be allowed in life, you must never despair.”Pelicot appeared at the Hay Festival to discuss her memoir A Hymn to Life, which The Standard described in its review as a “paean to dignity in the face of the unspeakable”.