Elektra/Persona at the National, or An Unpersuasive Mash-up

Note: This is a review of the matinee on Saturday 12th September 2026.

 I booked for this show purely because it was at the National and I now have a very long run of not missing a show there. When I learned it was to run two hours without an interval and I came to re-examine the creative team involved and saw how many of them had previous connections to shows I hadn't rated my heart rather sank. My enthusiasm for the afternoon ahead further diminished when I spotted photos of the ensemble in the programme holding a film camera. As it turned out, despite the lack of an interval, this is a show of two halves. The first (a version of Electra) has points of interest, but I did find myself thinking too often for the good of this show of Strauss's superior operatic version which I was able to revisit in Edinburgh a few weeks back. The second (Persona) is gimmicky and increasingly interminable.

Director and version creator Benedict Andrews presumably thinks there are close connections between the two works, but I was not convinced. The only concrete connection that I could spot is the fact that the actress who has suffered a breakdown at the start of Persona did so while performing as Electra. I suppose that there are vague thematic links about female identity and family relationships but to be blunt about it I did not think that either half did much to illuminate the other.

The afternoon starts with a coin toss to determine which parts Cate Blanchett and Nina Hoss are going to play. In this instance we got Blanchett as Electra/Elizabeth and Hoss as Clytemnestra/Alma. I actually didn't properly see the coin toss as an usher was obliged to struggle down the row (no easy thing in the Lyttelton) to deal with someone obviously unable to read the signs prohibiting filming. The last time I saw this device used was at the Almeida's Mary Stuart. I wasn't wholly persuaded by it then and I was even less so here. It already risks undermining belief in the drama, especially because the audience will insist on applauding the two actresses as soon as they come on (though I take my hat off to Blanchett for her perfectly accurate response - "We haven't done anything yet"). But Andrews then leans into pointing up the artificiality of proceedings - he indulges in the mistaken directorial habit of having his performers sit in the front of the stalls when not in scenes, and he requires them to cover their faces with white paint from a bowl stage right before going on-stage. This creates an immediate conflict with the text when Electra talks about her scratched face and instead, at least from my seat towards the back of the Stalls, she simply looked white faced.

Magda Willi's design doesn't help in the initial stages either. All we get is a set of large, grand steps - with nothing else to help us imagine we're in Agamemnon's palace, and having to work with a modernised script. As so often with versions of Greek tragedy Andrews never really establishes when we are. That said, as the Electra portion of the performance proceeds the set works better, I suspect because one can just about imagine the steps might be leading to the rest of Agamemnon's palace, though the small cast still spend too much time wandering up and down them. But the set really doesn't work for Persona where even in director Benedict Andrews's version of the Bergman original there are at least two concrete locations mentioned (a clinic and a summer house) such that the script feels at odds with what we see.

The show also has a recorded score courtesy of Hildur Guonadottir (though weirdly she's credited as composer online but not in the programme) - it's another of the variety currently in vogue which I've termed ominous organ music indicating trouble ahead, and would be better cut entirely (again I suspect having heard Strauss's magnificent score so recently did not do Guonadottir any favours).

Electra is recognisably similar to that Strauss version (I don't know Sophocles's original sufficiently well to comment on how close Andrews is to that). There were some insightful elements - particularly the suggestion that Iphigenia was treated as a favourite and Electra has either felt overshadowed by that, or neglected by her mother. But there are also hopeless confusions particularly when Aegisthus is killed by Electra now wearing a coat earlier identified as Orestes's. I really couldn't make out whether we were supposed to think it was Orestes or Electra doing the deed, and indeed it is not at all clear by this point whether any of it is any more than Electra's fevered imaginings. Another problem with this is the laughable handling of that killing. Blanchett is handed a bottle of what turns out to be fake blood, swigs from it and spits it over Aegisthus, who eventually falls down dead. Then, just as she's about to murder Clytemnestra the whole thing stops - this is presumably intended to persuade us that this is because she is the actress Elizabeth having a breakdown but it really doesn't work owing to what follows.

Judging from the programme the original intention was to have an interval. That might have worked better. Instead, the Electra just stops and we have something like five minutes of stage cleaning and resetting, while around the edges the performers tidy themselves and re-make up. It makes it impossible to believe that we have just witnessed Elizabeth breaking down while performing Electra.

The longer second half consists largely of close up film of Blanchett. She films herself using a hand held camera and the results are projected onto a square screen sitting in the middle of the staircase. This has the usual effect of making it very difficult to pay attention to the live action. If I wanted to see a long film of close ups of Cate Blanchett I'd go to the cinema. 

I've never seen the Bergman original so I can't comment on how close Andrews's version is to it. In this version there is far too much describing rather than showing. There are tiresome references to the Middle East and climate crises which feel like lazy box ticking. There's a flirtation with the idea the two women (actress and nurse) might swap places, but as with the Orestes/Electra sequence earlier it just ends up confused. There's an abysmal sequence where they take the handheld camera backstage (I was reminded of a similar moment in Ivo van Hove's Network) - I quite enjoyed seeing parts of the Lyttelton I don't usually see but it made the show itself even more ridiculous than it already was (I'm afraid this was the second time I had to stifle my laughter). 

In advance I'd thought that even if the play was poor it would be worth seeing for Blanchett. To my surprise, having been underwhelmed by her in a recent Donmar Chekhov, I was more persuaded by Nina Hoss. In Electra Blanchett makes the mistake of starting with a lot of shouting meaning there isn't far enough vocally to go later - and the performance never quite managed to transcend the muddle of Andrews's text, whereas Hoss does find more clarity of character in Clytemnestra. In Electra's case I could not quite lose the thought that Strauss finds a much more persuasive range of dynamics and emotion. In Persona Blanchett has the challenge that she has almost no lines, and she's not helped by direction or set, but there were a couple of expressions to camera that struck me as too arch.

I'm tempted to think that without Andrews and Blanchett attached to this it would never have got on the Lyttelton stage. However, I do wonder if the venue's artistic leadership might have been deceived into thinking it's a searing exploration of women's lives and put it on anyway. At the curtain I was bracing myself for a standing ovation. Eventually it did come but it was slow and I couldn't help thinking that there was an element of peer pressure rather than spontaneous reaction. There was also a little restlessness visible in my immediate vicinity during Persona. Overall, this turned into a fairly interminable afternoon - no need to queue for returns.