Director Benedict Andrews has created an interval-free production at London's National Theatre that merges Sophocles' tragedy of familial vengeance with Ingmar Bergman's 1966 film about performance and silence. The work draws on Sophocles' account of Electra, trapped in cycles of revenge, and Bergman's narrative of an actor who stops speaking while performing Electra on stage. The production runs at the National Theatre until October 10.
Cate Blanchett and Nina Hoss share the parts of Electra and her mother Clytemnestra across both the ancient Greek and modernist frameworks. They also play Elisabeth, the silent actor in Bergman's narrative, and Alma, the nurse who forms a mirrored, disturbing relationship with her. Andrews enlists these dual castings to raise the conceptual stakes beyond the original works.
The production presents what the director frames as a show of two halves, binding material separated by more than two millennia of theatre history into a single continuous piece.