Wagner Moura brings Ibsen to the dock in Edinburgh festival's first three-way European co-production
Golden Globe winner Wagner Moura takes the stage at the Edinburgh International Festival this week in A Trial — after An Enemy of the People, a radical contemporary sequel to Henrik Ibsen's 1882 play that transplants the story from a Norwegian spa town to modern-day Brazil. The production runs from 7 to 10 August 2026, with tickets starting at £15 and described as limited on the festival's website Edinburgh International Festival.
Moura, who became the first Brazilian actor to win a Golden Globe when he collected the best actor in a drama prize on 11 January for his role in The Secret Agent, plays Dr Thomas Stockmann — the character who, in Ibsen's original, uncovered contaminated water in a local spa town. In this production, Stockmann is himself on trial, years after the original events WhatsOnStage.
The play is staged as an immersive courtroom drama. The audience sits among desks and live video feeds, and some theatregoers are selected as jurors. The production runs an uninterrupted two and a half hours, incorporating multimedia film footage and expert testimonies. It explores themes of capitalism, the ambiguity of fact, and public judgment WhatsOnStage.
The piece is the first collaboration between Moura and Brazilian theatre-maker Christiane Jatahy, who directs Festival d'Avignon. The two co-wrote the play with Lucas Paraizo WhatsOnStage. Moura is known internationally for Narcos and The Secret Agent Edinburgh International Festival.
The production is also a festival first. It is the inaugural co-production between the Edinburgh International Festival, Holland Festival, and Festival d'Avignon — three of Europe's oldest arts festivals, all founded within the same post-war decade. The collaboration is the beginning of a plan to celebrate the three festivals' shared 80th anniversaries in 2027 WhatsOnStage.
The Edinburgh International Festival announced A Trial as one of its 2026 Festival Flagship Performances back in November 2025 Edinburgh International Festival. The festival described both Ibsen's original and Jatahy's sequel as addressing timely political and ecological issues Edinburgh International Festival.
Before arriving in Edinburgh, A Trial was presented at the Holland Festival in Amsterdam from 25 to 28 June 2026 at the Internationaal Theater Amsterdam Holland Festival. It is also part of the Festival d'Avignon's 2026 programme Festival d'Avignon.
The Edinburgh run gives four performances over four days at the festival, which the official listing categorises as Political, Interactive, and Courtroom Drama Edinburgh International Festival. For a festival better known for orchestral concerts and opera, putting a Brazilian-led, audience-as-jury courtroom piece on the flagship list signals how broadly the programming net is being cast.
What makes this stand out is the architecture around it. Three major European festivals pooling resources on a single production is rare. That the result is a Portuguese-language play built around an Ibsen character, staged with live cameras and volunteer jurors, makes it a more unlikely headline still. Whether the 80th-anniversary plan in 2027 builds on this template or simply celebrates the festivals separately is not yet known.
