Benedict Andrews folded Sophocles' Electra into Bergman's Persona for the National Theatre, with Cate Blanchett and Nina Hoss as the two women whose faces merge into one.
Benedict Andrews’s new play Electra/Persona ran at the National Theatre on the South Bank from Wednesday 19 August to Saturday 10 October 2026. It joined Sophocles’ tragedy to a Bergman film, with Cate Blanchett and Nina Hoss as its two women.
Sophocles wrote Electra late in the fifth century BC. His heroine stays outside the palace at Argos, mourning her murdered father in public while the household that killed him wants her quiet.
Ingmar Bergman made Persona in Sweden in 1966. It begins with an actress who falls silent while performing Electra and never speaks again. Liv Ullmann played the actress, and Bibi Andersson the nurse sent to care for her.
Sven Nykvist shot the film. It is known by one composite image that joins half of one woman’s face to half of the other’s.
One work is about a woman who will not stop speaking, the other about a woman who stops. Andrews wrote a play that held both in one body, on the Lyttelton stage, in two hours with no interval.
Ella Lily Hyland completed the cast of three. Hildur Guðnadóttir composed the score, Magda Willi designed and Jon Clark lit the production.