Cate Blanchett in Electra/Persona at the National Theatre: Your Complete Evening Guide

Electra/Persona opens at the Lyttelton Theatre on 19 August 2026. Cate Blanchett and Nina Hoss. A new play by Benedict Andrews. Ten weeks in one of the world’s great theatre buildings. It is, even before a single review is published, the most anticipated production of the year.

This guide covers everything you need to plan your evening: what the production is, how to get tickets (including how to pay less), how to get to the National Theatre, where to eat beforehand, and a suggested timeline for the whole evening. We are Draughts Waterloo – a board game bar and restaurant a 10-minute walk from the National Theatre on Waterloo Road.

What is Electra/Persona?

It is a new play by Benedict Andrews, described by the National Theatre as “a new play after Sophocles and Ingmar Bergman.” That phrase contains a lot.

Andrews has taken two source texts from opposite ends of the twentieth century – one ancient, one modern – and woven them into something new. The result is described as “a powerful exploration of identity, and the fragile line between who we are and who we play.” In the NT’s own words: “During a performance of Electra, an actress suddenly falls silent. What follows is a rupture: two women drawn into an intense, unsettling encounter where speech breaks down and the boundaries between self and role give way.”

To understand what Andrews is doing, it helps to know something about both source texts.

Sophocles’ Electra

Sophocles’ Electra is one of the great Greek tragedies, written in the fifth century BC. It follows Electra, the daughter of Agamemnon – the Greek king murdered on his return from Troy by his wife Clytemnestra and her lover Aegisthus. Electra watches her mother live unpunished with the man who killed her father. She grieves, she rages, she waits. The play is less about action than about the condition of waiting: what it does to a person to be consumed by a grief that has no outlet and a justice that does not come.

What makes Sophocles’ version distinctive among the three surviving ancient tragedies on the same subject – the others by Aeschylus and Euripides – is its psychological focus. The horror of the play is Electra’s inner life: the way her grief has become her identity, the way she has made herself into a monument to something that is also slowly destroying her.

Bergman’s Persona

Ingmar Bergman’s Persona was released in 1966. It is one of the most studied and discussed films in cinema history – not because it is easy to watch, but because it does something to the viewer that is difficult to name or shake off afterwards.

The film begins with an actress named Elisabet Vogler who, in the middle of a performance, simply stops speaking. She is not physically ill. She has chosen silence, and she maintains it absolutely. A nurse named Alma is assigned to take care of her. The two women retreat to a coastal cottage. The film that follows is about what happens when one person refuses to perform herself and the other cannot stop performing – and how the boundary between two people begins, under that pressure, to dissolve.

Bergman’s Persona explicitly opens with a character performing Electra. The film begins at a theatre, in a performance. The play about grief and waiting is the thing the actress abandons. Andrews has read that connection, and built a new work from it.

What Andrews has made from them

Benedict Andrews is an Australian director whose work is known for its intensity and its visual intelligence – theatre that thinks like cinema. His previous work includes A Streetcar Named Desire with Gillian Anderson.

What Electra/Persona offers is not a production of Sophocles with Bergman references, or a staging of the film with Greek myth woven in. It is a new work that uses both texts as raw material: their characters, their situations, their central preoccupations with identity and performance and the cost of grief. The NT’s description – “two women drawn into an intense, unsettling encounter where speech breaks down and the boundaries between self and role give way” – suggests something that will be formally unusual as well as emotionally demanding.

It is, in other words, not easy theatre. It is the kind of production that stays with you.

The cast

Cate Blanchett plays one of the two central roles. She has two Academy Awards – Best Supporting Actress for The Aviator and Best Actress for Blue Jasmine – and an extensive stage career, including five years as co-artistic director of the Sydney Theatre Company alongside Andrew Upton (2008-2013). Her previous National Theatre credits include The Seagull.

Nina Hoss plays the other. The German actress is known to British audiences for Patrick Melrose and, more recently, for Todd Field’s Tar (2022), in which she and Blanchett were cast as partners. That film earned Blanchett her third Academy Award nomination and Hoss widespread new recognition in English-language work. Electra/Persona is the first time Blanchett and Hoss have performed together on stage. Hoss’s previous National Theatre credits include The Cherry Orchard.

Ella Lily Hyland, known for the Netflix series Black Doves, completes the central trio.

The creative team

Benedict Andrews writes and directs. Set design is by Magda Willi. Costumes are by Merle Hensel. Lighting is by Jon Clark, whose previous NT work includes The Lehman Trilogy, Dear England and The Motive and the Cue.

The score is composed by Hildur Gudnadottir – the Icelandic composer and cellist who won the Academy Award for Best Original Score in 2020 for Joker. She also scored the HBO series Chernobyl in 2019. Her work is atmospheric, string-led and emotionally precise. In a production about identity dissolving and speech breaking down, the score will not be decorative.

Dates, performance times and tickets

Venue: Lyttelton Theatre, National Theatre, Upper Ground, South Bank, London SE1 9PX

Previews: 19-24 August 2026

Full run: 25 August to 10 October 2026

Preview ticket prices: £25, £36, £50, £66 and £82

Standard ticket prices: £30, £50, £72, £92 and £120

Booking fee: £4 per order for online and phone bookings

Please note the following performances begin at 6:30pm rather than 7:30pm: Thursday 17 September, Thursday 24 September, Tuesday 29 September and Tuesday 6 October.

Important: Latecomers may not be admitted. Plan your arrival carefully.

Book at nationaltheatre.org.uk.

The case for preview tickets

The preview performances (19-24 August) offer a meaningful saving. Tickets start at £25 instead of £30, and the top price is £82 rather than £120. The production is the same production. The cast is the same cast. Previews in major productions at the NT are fully staged performances – they are not rough runs or workshop versions.

The one difference is that preview performances are where the production is still finding its final shape. Some people feel previews have an energy full runs cannot replicate. Others prefer to wait for the work to settle. Either way, the financial case is clear, and preview availability goes first.

How to pay less for Electra/Persona tickets

The National Theatre releases £10 Friday Rush tickets every Friday at 1pm for performances in the following week. For a production of this profile, these will be extremely high demand. Sign up at nationaltheatre.org.uk/fridayrush and be ready at 1pm.

Standby tickets are available in person at the Box Office 60 minutes before each performance. General Standby saves up to £20 off selected seats. Reduced Standby tickets at £20-£30 are available to students, Stage Pass holders, SOLT and theatre union members, and the unemployed, with valid ID. Subject to availability.

Concessions: under 18s receive £20 off tickets priced £40 and above for Monday to Friday evenings and matinees. Aged 16-25: tickets at £5 (16-18) or £10 (19-25), maximum two per production. Over 60s save £20 off selected prices on midweek matinees. See nationaltheatre.org.uk/ways-to-save for current details.

Note: adult group bookings (10+) are not available for Electra/Persona. The above individual and concession options remain open.

Accessible performances

The National Theatre offers a full range of accessible performances for Electra/Persona:

Captioned: Thursday 10 September at 7pm; Wednesday 30 September at 7pm

BSL Interpreted: Friday 18 September at 7pm; Thursday 1 October at 7pm

Audio Described: Saturday 12 September at 1pm (preceded by a Touch Tour 90 minutes before); Thursday 8 October at 7pm

Relaxed Performance: Wednesday 7 October at 7pm

Book accessible performances through the NT Box Office or call the Access Line on 020 7452 3961.

Content advisory

This production contains descriptions and depictions of a sexual nature, violence and murder, references and descriptions of suicide, flashing lights, loud sounds and haze. If any of these are relevant to members of your group, check the NT’s access information before booking.

Getting to the National Theatre

The National Theatre is at Upper Ground, South Bank, London SE1 9PX.

By tube: Waterloo is the nearest station, a 5-minute walk. Southwark and Embankment are both 10 minutes. Waterloo is served by the Jubilee, Northern, Bakerloo and Waterloo and City lines.

By train: Waterloo, Waterloo East and Charing Cross are all 10-15 minutes on foot.

By bus: Stops on Waterloo Bridge, Waterloo Road and Stamford Street. Use the TfL Journey Planner.

By bike: Santander Cycles docking stations on Upper Ground and in Concert Hall Approach.

By car: The NT has an underground car park with 290 spaces from the south-west corner of the building on Upper Ground. Height restriction 6’2″ (1.88m). Evening rate from 5pm: £10. Cashless only. Blue Badge holders attending a performance park free – scan your badge at a payment kiosk.

By river: Uber Boat by Thames Clippers to Embankment Pier, then a short walk across Waterloo Bridge.

Planning your evening at Electra/Persona

The National Theatre building is free to enter and open from 10am Monday to Saturday. The foyers usually have exhibitions, and the riverside terrace at the Understudy bar looks out directly onto the Thames. Worth arriving before the show.

Electra/Persona is a serious and intense piece of theatre. Most people find they want to settle properly before a show like this – not rush in from the tube at 7:25pm. Give yourself time.

For a 7:30pm performance, we suggest:

• 5:45pm – arrive at Draughts Waterloo (10-minute walk from the National Theatre). Order drinks and food.
• 6:00pm-7:00pm – dinner at Draughts.
• 7:00pm – leave for the theatre.
• 7:10pm – arrive at the National Theatre. Collect tickets, find the Lyttelton entrance, explore the foyers.
• 7:30pm – curtain up. Note: latecomers may not be admitted.

For the 6:30pm performances (17 Sep, 24 Sep, 29 Sep, 6 Oct), adjust accordingly – a lighter pre-show visit to Draughts for drinks rather than a full dinner, arriving at the NT by 6:15pm.

After the show, Draughts Waterloo is open for post-show drinks. Electra/Persona will finish somewhere between 9:30pm and 10pm depending on running time. It is the kind of production people want to sit with and talk through. We are a good place for that.

Where to eat near the National Theatre before Electra/Persona – Draughts Waterloo

We are a board game bar and restaurant on Waterloo Road, a 10-minute walk from the National Theatre. Full kitchen running every evening, three bars, and a games library of over 1,000 titles. We are the right place to arrive early, eat properly and arrive at the Lyttelton Theatre settled rather than rushed.

Book a table at draughtslondon.com. We recommend booking on show nights.

The food and drink

The Sampler Platter – corn dogs, empanadas, halloumi fries, tortilla chips, hummus, guacamole – is the easy group option. The Short Rib Birria Tacos, slow-cooked rare breed beef in a chilli and lime broth with a consommé for dipping, are the standout dish. The Double Smashed Cheese Burger is there when that is what the evening calls for.

Drinks: pitchers (the Margarita Pitcher, the Dark and Stormy, the Cream Soda Bramble), individual cocktails, wine and House Lager on draught. The Korean Fried Chicken – sticky soy and gochujang glaze, crispy onions, citrus mayo – if you want something quick.

Frequently Asked Questions