Ben Whishaw and Kathryn Hunter play a novelist and his mother in Colin Teevan's Eurotrash at the Young Vic, 13 November 2026 to 9 January 2027.
Christian Kracht published Eurotrash in 2021 and it was read as the most uncomfortable book of the German-language year: a blocked novelist called Christian Kracht is summoned to Zurich by his mother, and the two of them set off across Switzerland in a taxi trying to give away her fortune. The money came from arms investments and dairy products. The mother is drinking, on medication, and impossible; the son is complicit in every way a son can be; and the family history they are driving through is Europe’s.
Colin Teevan has adapted it and Walter Meierjohann directs, both of whom last worked at this theatre a decade ago on The Emperor.
Kathryn Hunter plays the mother and Ben Whishaw the son, which is the reason this will be difficult to get into. Hunter is the actor other actors go to watch — a physical performer who has played Lear and Richard III and every kind of gargoyle — and Whishaw has spent twenty years being the best stage actor of his generation in between the films. They have never worked together. It runs in the Main House from Friday 13 November 2026 to Saturday 9 January 2027, holding the Young Vic’s Christmas slot with a play rather than a seasonal show. Lizzie Clachan designs, and that is the third reason to book it.