Benedict Andrews’s new production Electra/Persona attempts to fuse the classical narrative of Sophocles’s fifth-century BC tragedy Electra with Ingmar Bergman’s 1966 film Persona, presenting a complex, multi-layered exploration of identity and performance. Staged in a minimalist setting, the play features Cate Blanchett and Nina Hoss in leading roles, with a unique casting device whereby a coin toss determines which actor assumes which part. On press night, Blanchett portrayed Clytemnestra, the queen who has murdered her husband Agamemnon, while Hoss took on the role of Electra, her vengeance-driven daughter.

The production is structured in two contrasting halves. The first unfolds as a reinterpretation of Sophocles’s tragedy, with Hoss delivering Electra's fury through intense physicality and emotional outbursts. The second half shifts to a meta-theatrical scenario inspired by Bergman’s Persona, where Hoss plays an actress experiencing a crisis that renders her mute during a performance of Electra, and Blanchett assumes the role of her nurse. This section incorporates video projections to capture the silent actor’s expressions in close-up, addressing the challenges of conveying subtle facial emotion to a theater audience, a difficulty noted in previous stage adaptations of Persona.

The actors, dressed plainly to resemble rehearsal attire and applying white chalk to their faces to suggest masks, navigate the blurred lines between character and self. Supporting roles are filled by Patrick Robinson and Ella Lily Hyland. The set design by Magda Willi features a sparse stage with wooden steps and a conspicuous hammer, elements that both ground and abstract the action.

While the play ambitiously intertwines Sophocles’s tragedy with Bergman’s psychological drama, critics have noted a lack of organic connection between the two materials beyond the central theme of silencing and identity crisis. The script incorporates dense psychoanalytic language, occasionally veering toward what some perceive as parody, and the actors double as other absent characters through quick costume changes, an approach intended to emphasize the fragmentation of personality but which risks appearing contrived.

Bergman’s original film is invoked with reverence but also scrutinized for its spiritual and symbolic opacity, particularly in the nurse’s character, Alma. Andrews’s direction overlays a self-reflexive examination of acting and authenticity, repeating speeches both on stage and on video to deepen the inquiry. While the production boasts moments of fascination and strong performances, especially from Blanchett and Hoss, it has been criticized for its heavy-handedness and lack of clarity in thematic cohesion.

Andrews, previously lauded for his work on productions such as Three Sisters and A Streetcar Named Desire, here faces challenges uniting the disparate elements into a coherent whole. Blanchett’s performance, though consistently compelling, exhibits unevenness in tone and execution. Electra/Persona thus emerges as an ambitious but contentious theatrical experiment, provoking reflection on the nature of identity, performance, and silence, even as it struggles to fully engage its audience.