Ben Whishaw and Kathryn Hunter play a son and his formidable mother on a road trip through the Swiss Alps in Eurotrash, the stage version of Christian Kracht's novel that opens the Young Vic's winter next month. Here is everything you need to know before you book.
Few pairings in London this winter promise as much on paper. Eurotrash puts Ben Whishaw opposite Kathryn Hunter, one of the most physically inventive actors of her generation, in a new adaptation by Colin Teevan of the novel by the Swiss writer Christian Kracht. It is directed by Walter Meierjohann, and it runs in the Main House at the Young Vic from Friday 13 November 2026 to Saturday 9 January 2027.
The production is a Young Vic and Red Peter co-production, and it reunites the director, the adapter and their leading lady: Meierjohann, Teevan and Hunter made Kafka's Monkey together at the same theatre in 2009, and returned with The Emperor in 2016. The casting was rounded out when the theatre announced the rest of its season, which we covered at the end of September.
Who is starring in Eurotrash?
Kathryn Hunter plays the mother, an elderly woman of great wealth and very little self-restraint, and Ben Whishaw plays her son, a novelist who cannot write. They are joined by Deanna H. Choi, who also composed the score, and Glyn Pritchard. Annabel Arden and Chris Jared are the understudies.
Hunter's credits run from her Olivier-winning work in the 1990s to the Coen brothers' film of The Tragedy of Macbeth and Yorgos Lanthimos's Poor Things; on stage she has played King Lear and Puck. It is a company of four, so the two leads carry the evening between them.
Spotlight on Ben Whishaw
London first took notice of Ben Whishaw in 2004, when Trevor Nunn cast him as Hamlet at the Old Vic while he was barely out of drama school. The stage has kept a claim on him since, from Jez Butterworth's Mojo in the West End to Dionysus in Bakkhai at the Almeida and Brutus in Julius Caesar at the Bridge. Screen audiences know him as Q in the Bond films, as the voice of Paddington, and as Norman Scott in A Very English Scandal, which won him an Emmy; more recently he led This Is Going to Hurt and played the photographer in the film Peter Hujar's Day. This role asks something different of him: the son is the one being dragged along, so much of the part lies in how he answers his mother rather than in what he sets in motion. Opposite an actor of Hunter's range, that is the pairing to watch, and it is the reason to see Whishaw in Eurotrash rather than simply to see him.
What is Eurotrash about?
A writer stuck on his next book is called to Zurich by his mother, who is keeping herself upright with vodka, pills and expensive knitwear. She has decided to get rid of the family money, a fortune built on arms holdings and dairy, and she wants him to help. So the two of them set off across the Swiss mountains with the cash in a plastic carrier bag, quarrelling all the way.
The journey is comic, often blackly so, but Kracht's book is also about inheritance in the larger sense: what a family owes for the way its wealth was made, and what Europe owes for its twentieth century. The production bills it as both a travelogue and a search for redemption, and the age guidance is 12+.
Who is behind the production?
Walter Meierjohann directs. The set and costumes are by Lizzie Clachan, the lighting is by Richard Howell, and the music is by Deanna H. Choi, who shares the sound design with Charlie Smith. Jozef Houben is the movement director. Romana Meyat is associate director and Lydia McKinley is the Jerwood assistant director.
Colin Teevan, who wrote the adaptation, works as readily for television as for the stage; his screen credits include Das Boot and Rebellion. The production is supported by the Charlotte Aitken Trust.
When and where can I see it?
Eurotrash runs in the Main House at the Young Vic on The Cut from Friday 13 November 2026 to Saturday 9 January 2027, with press night on Thursday 19 November at 7pm. Evening performances are at 7.30pm from Monday to Saturday, with matinees at 2.30pm on Wednesdays and Saturdays. The running time has not yet been confirmed. Tickets currently start at £14.
What else should I book if I like it?
- dissent, for a second new play in the same building: debbie tucker green writes and directs, with Lashana Lynch leading the company in spring 2027.
- Gem of the Ocean, August Wilson's play set in Pittsburgh in 1904, also in the Young Vic's season.
- Cloud 9, Caryl Churchill's comedy at the National Theatre, for anyone who likes their laughter with an unsettling undertow about family and empire.
- Hamlet Hail to the Thief at the Barbican, a Hamlet retold through the music of Radiohead's album of the same name.
