Electra/Persona

by Benedict Andrews after Sophocles and Ingmar Bergman

seen at the National Theatre (Lyttleton) on 21 August 2026

Benedict Andrews has had the interesting idea of presenting a stripped down version of Sophocles's Electra (in which an impassioned daughter seeks vengeance for her father's murder by her mother) followed by a stage version of Ingmar Bergman's celebrated 1966 film Persona (in which an actress playing Electra has fled a performance of the play, has refused to speak, and is being cared for by a loquacious nurse). He directs Cate Blanchett and Nina Hoss who alternate the parts of Electra and Clytemnestra in the first half and the silent actress Elisabeth and the nurse Alma in the second half, with Ella Lily Hyland as Chrysothemis (Electra's sister) then Anna (the doctor treating Elisabeth), and Patrick Robinson as Aegisthus (Clytemnestra's lover) then Elisabeth's husband.

At the beginning the four actors enter in front of the front row of the audience and the two leads ask a member of the audience to toss a coin, with the rules that apply for determining first service in a tennis match; on this occasion Nina Hoss lost the call so Cate Blanchett could choose the roles and she chose to play Clytemnestra and Alma. Whether this ploy is in some way "fixed" so that a reasonable alteration of role playing can take place is an uncertain point; it will apparently not be possible consult the box office in order to arrange to see two performances with a guarantee that the roles will be reversed.

On a strikingly bare set designed by Magda Willi, consisting of a steep series of white stone steps covering the full width of the Lyttleton stage and leading apparently nowhere, and with a stainless steel hammer centrally placed and spotlit, the play Electra begins with Electra crawling up towards the hammer groaning in grief and anger, her desperate desire to avenge her father's murder unassuaged for years due to the absence of her brother Orestes. Her sister's appeals to reason appal and disgust her. When Clytemnestra appears the dreadful tangle of familial love, anger, hatred and resentment threatens to boil over: both women are implacable in their self-righteous justifications. 

In the absence of an actor taking the part of Orestes, the recognition scene between brother and sister is dispensed with, and Electra in some sense becomes Orestes, or assumes his character, in order to despatch Aegisthus when he arrives thinking to hear news of Orestes's death: unlike the formal arrangements of a Greek tragedy, the murder takes place on stage (and in a further departure from Sophocles, his death occurs before that of Clytemnestra). When "Orestes" confronts Clytemnestra (a scene drawn more from Aeschylus's version of the story) we might expect further butchery - but it is at this point that Electra inexplicably flees the stage through the auditorium; a curtain descends as if to deal with an unforeseen emergency and we are at the interval.

In Persona, the actress Elisabeth has been silent for some time, and her doctor assigns the nurse Alma to look after her; eventually they go to live in a seaside cottage, an arrangement which the doctor hopes will be restorative. But Elisabeth remains silent, while Alma talks and talks and talks. Elisabeth's features are projected from a hand-held video camera onto a large screen so that we can see that her perpetual silence is given subtle nuances by the smallest fleeting expressions on her face: it is a masterful piece of acting and a surprisingly resilient foil to the nurse's prolonged and at times desperate chatter as Alma deploys increasingly frantic methods to get Elisabeth to talk: only a direct physical threat leads to a distressed cry of alarm.

Is this juxtaposition a success? There are complex factors at work. We see actors choosing their parts in front of us, but then their performances are so intense and convincing that we perhaps "forget", in the usual way of audiences, that we are watching people who are acting, and we immerse ourselves in the presented dilemmas of the characters they are portraying. Then the performance inexplicably stops, and we never go back to it: we do not see the second murder nor do we have any idea of the consequences of this particular matricide (an issue not addressed in any surviving play by Sophocles, though it is the subject of surviving plays by Aeschylus and Euripides). Instead we see an intense and increasingly unhealthy relationship between a patient and her nurse, a reminder at one level that we are concerned with the trauma of an actress who was playing Electra when she fled the stage. But now we are watching an actress playing a traumatised actress, and another actress playing an increasingly vulnerable nurse.

Although the ostensible link between the two parts is that the actress we saw playing Electra did indeed leave the stage precipitously, and throughout the Persona section is almost entirely silent, there is perhaps a subliminal connection relating to the issue of trauma. For the Greeks, the Electra story was one episode in a blood feud within the Mycenaean royal family which lasted for generations, and clearly the character of Orestes suffers what we would call trauma in killing his mother, depicted in the form of the Furies pursuing him - and it is noteworthy that he is totally trapped since his father's murder cries out for vengeance, but so too does his mother's murder. Clearly there are traumas in Persona - Elisabeth's silence is a traumatic response, and Alma too has deeply repressed feelings, some of which are articulated in her long monologues. The questions of childbearing and maternal affection are raised both by Clytemnestra in Electra (famously she dreams of having given birth to a serpent when bearing Orestes) and by Alma in Persona (as she attempts to imagine Elisabeth's reasons for tearing her child's photograph in two) and these parts are taken by the same actress.

It's an intense experience: Greek tragedy is by its nature intense, and so too are most of Bergman's films, this one not the least. The two parts, though derived from theatrical and filmic works from centuries apart, do nevertheless make for a compelling if strange unity. Some of the power undoubtedly comes from the format which forces us to recognise that acting is taking place - and superb acting at that. Deep human emotions are being explored, but the theatricality of the process is being highlighted at the same time instead of being taken for granted, which is unusual but stimulating.

Les Liaisons Dangereuses

by Christopher Hampton

seen at the National Theatre (Lyttleton) on 4 April 2026

Marianne Elliott directs Lesley Manville as the Marquise de Merteuil and Aidan Turner as the Vicomte de Valmont in Christopher Hampton's adaptation of the scandalous 18th-century novel Les Liaisons Dangereuses by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos, with Monica Barbaro as Madame de Tourvel and Hannah van der Westhuysen as Cécile de Volanges.

In a stark monochrome space dominated by a vast pastiche eighteenth-century mural of unbridled sensuality, and an occasionally appearing modernistic chandelier almost pre-figuring a glitter ball, the machinations of Valmont and Merteuil are played out in all their brazen cynicism. Dancing maidservants in opulently coloured ballgowns and footmen in white tie and tails swirl around the space creating a frisson of decadence and often expressing the underlying passions and confustions of the major characters. Fragments of elegant but austere walls with convenient doorways are wheeled on and gracefully moved around the stage to create boudoirs and salons as required in a deft choreography that allows for intimate scenes in what otherwise would be a featureless open space. Rosanna Vize's set design provides an evocative and sometimes dreamlike environment for the febrile atmosphere of seduction and betrayal unleashed by the unscrupulous due at the centre of the web.

The moral ugliness of what is essentially the grooming of the naive Cécile is perhaps too muted by all the stagecraft, but the increasing tension caused by Valmont's unexpected genuine feelings for Madame de Tourvel in the second half is magnificently served by the same techniques. Aidan Turner portrays the sensuous rake with a charismatic charm though perhaps lacking the most sinister undercurrents of the character - he does not seem quite dangerous enough. In the meantime Lesley Manville's portrait of the manipulative marquise goes from strength to strength: what would later be seen as "drawing room comedy", the sort of caustic wit deployed by Oscar Wilde or Noel Coward, gradually transforms into naked power plays driven by frustration and passion. Yet even her steeliest resolve cannot withstand the social ostracism engineered by a protegée whose eagerness to learn she has fatefully underestimated.

This production has different emphases from the one I saw many years ago in Sydney (within a year or so of its Stratford premiere in 1985), and from the Donmar's production ten years ago (see my review of 30 January 2016 posted in early February of that year), and from the celebrated film with Glenn Close, John Malkovich, Michelle Pfeiffer and Uma Thurman. These earlier productions were, for example, all presented in eighteenth-century costume. On the Lyttleton stage the visual impact was quite different, and yet wonderfully contrived to use the space to its best advantage. The play certainly flourishes even unmoored from its specific historical setting, which is a tribute to the playwright and to this production company.

The Corn is Green

by Emlyn Williams

seen at the National Theatre (Lyttleton) on 23 April 2022

Dominic Cooke directs this revival of Emlyn Williams's semi-autobiographical play The Corn is Green, first staged in the West End in 1938. Nicola Walker plays Miss Moffat, the inspirational schoolteacher who blasts her way like a whirlwind into the stratified society of a Welsh mining village and sees enormous promise in Morgan Evans, one of the miner's sons, played by Iwan Davies.

In a startling move Cooke and his designer ULTZ have imagined the play being created on a bare stage in front of our eyes, as if in the mind of Williams himself (Gareth David-Lloyd) who recites the detailed description of the set so typical of the play texts of the time, and then narrates the entrances and exits, the taking of cups of tea and setting out of lesson books, and so forth, with accompanying sound effects. At first this seems distracting and over-clever, but gradually the idea comes to be a brilliant way of showing the recollection and re-shaping of precious memories in action. It is therefore even more startling to find, after the interval, that the room so painstakingly described in words at the beginning has been given a physical manifestation on stage, in keeping with all those 'drawing room comedies' of its time.

Nicola Walker is excellent as Miss Moffat, inhabiting a character who brings all the force of her personality and convictions to bear on a society that expects women of her class to do nothing if they do not marry and produce children. Even on a cavernous stage with bare concrete walls she dominates and controls, blithely unaware of the way she rides roughshod over the personal cost to her star pupil, or the feelings of other lesser beings. Inevitably Morgan rebels, and the social pressures of the time are set to trap him: the energy of the play and of this production almost distract us from the somewhat distasteful moral dilemma posed and the extremely arbitrary solution adopted to 'save' him.

The play remains a powerful expression of gratitude to a life-changing event in a young boy's life, and the intense conviction that a sharp mind will flourish with education shines through the circumstances that tie the story to a particular time and place. The whole thing was a joy to watch.

The Seven Streams of the River Ota

by Robert Lepage and others (Ex Machina)

seen at the National Theatre (Lyttleton) on 6 March 2020

In contrast to the short plays currently featured at several theatres (the Bridge, the Donmar, the Orange Tree), Robert Lepage brings one of his sprawling epic productions to the Lyttleton for only eight performances - not surprising as the performance lasts for just over seven hours (including two intervals and a longer break - perhaps five and a half acting hours all told).

The free program provides a list of actors but no list of characters, and notes on various topics relevant to the play - the atomic bombs at the close of the Second World War and the subsequent US occupation of Japan; the Theresienstadt concentration camp; Madame Butterfly; the World Expo held in Osaka in 1970; Georges Feydeau; Yukio Mishima; Abbott and Costello; and the Butō dance tradition in Japan. From this wide-ranging list can be gleaned something of the scope of the play, which is divided (of course) into seven acts, starting in Hiroshima in 1945, moving to New York in 1965, Osaka in 1970, Amsterdam in 1985, and Hiroshima again in 1986, 1995 and 1999. These too are not listed in the program, but their number, name, location and date is projected at the start of each section.

Hansard

by Simon Woods

seen by live streaming from the National Theatre (Lyttleton) on 7 November 2019

Simon Godwin directs Alex Jennings as Robin Hesketh (MP and junior Cabinet Minister) and Lindsay Duncan as his wife Diana in an intense drama which begins almost innocuously as social or political comedy set in May 1988, in the week that the Local Government Act including the notorious section 28 was passed into law.

Robin returns to the marital home in the Cotswolds on the Saturday morning after the crucial vote to find Diana still not dressed, and a familiar sparring begins in which it becomes clear that she has nothing but scorn for the role of politician's wife, and, even more difficult for her husband, little sympathy with Tory policy or the general outlook of her husband.  The arguments are presumably well worn in the house, but still engaged on both sides with some degree of passion mixed with the sort of resigned weariness that allows the audience to be amused.

Angels in America Part Two: Perestroika

by Tony Kushner

seen at the National Theatre (Lyttleton) on 7 August 2017

Marianne Elliott directs this revival of Tony Kushner's sprawling two part epic subtitled 'A Gay Fantasia on National Themes'. The second part takes up where the first part finished, with the marriage of Joe (Russell Tovey) and Harper Pitt (Denise Gough) in tatters, Prior Walter (Andrew Garfield) trying to fathom whether the Angel's visitation is real or a hallucination, Lewis (James McArdle) his ex-lover) and Joe Pitt tentatively exploring the possibilities of a relationship, and Roy Cohn (Nathan Lane) approaching death. The nurse Belize (Nathan Stewart-Jarrett) provides a strange link between all these characters.

The quality of the production that I praised in the review of Part One (in May) is easily matched in Part Two, as the themes of love, loss, betrayal and fear of death are further elaborated and examined. The disparate elements of angelic powerlessness, encroaching illness, the breakdown of personal relationships, and despair at political negligence and injustice, and the glimmers of hope in the face of it all, are woven into a compelling tapestry, and once again the skill and commitment of the cast prevent the whole fantasy from unravelling into bombastic talk.

Angels in America Part One: Millennium Approaches

by Tony Kushner

seen at the National Theatre (Lyttleton) on 18 May 2017

Marianne Elliott directs this revival of Tony Kushner's sprawling two part epic subtitled 'A Gay Fantasia on National Themes'. In 1992 I saw the first production (by Declan Donnellan) of this first part in 1992 in the National's smallest auditorium, then named the Cottesloe (now the Dorfman); it was fascinating to see it reimagined for the larger and more conventional proscenium stage of the Lyttleton. The grandeur and expansiveness of the conception was easier to appreciate, but perhaps some of the raw intensity was dissipated.

The play is wide-ranging and ambitious - a fantasia indeed as it follows several major characters facing (or evading) the AIDS crisis of the 1980s and their own personal struggles with loyalty, love and honesty. The cast is uniformly excellent, fully committed to the extravagances of the text and thus able to hold the audience's attention during the long speeches while being equally compelling in the tense and often agonising personal encounters that drive the action. The design (sets by Ian MacNeil and lighting by Paule Constable) marvellously reflects the disparate spaces in which the scenes take place - offices, apartments, parks, streets and a hospital ward - all managed on three independent evolves across the width of the stage.

Andrew Garfield gives an astonishing performance as Prior Walter, the young gay man facing the onset of AIDS and the cruel failure of his lover Louis (an excellent James McArdle) to stay with him as his condition worsens. Not only is he wounded emotionally by Louis's departure, he is also terrified of the illness and fearful of his grasp on sanity as strange visions afflict him. Garfield's portrayal of this central character is utterly compelling, his physical mannerisms imbuing an initially camp hand-wringing with increasingly expressive desperation, and his vocal range encompassing mounting hysteria with absolute conviction. 

James McArdle renders Louis's selfishness and introspection in bravura passages of talk, almost completely unaware of the offence and pain he might be causing, and digging himself deeper into guilt and self-recrimination as he tries to account for himself and explain his world view. Such a person could be just obtuse but somehow one senses the pain and confusion.

The only historical character presented on stage is the odious Roy Cohn, played by Nathan Lane, a man obsessed by power and influence, shamelessly predatory and manipulative. It's a dazzling display of brazen self-confidence, mesmerising and horrific to watch as Cohn refuses to accept that he has AIDS or that he is homosexual, all the time wheeling and dealing to preserve his position as a formidable lawyer. The haplessly conflicted Joe Pitt (an anguished Russell Tovey) is fatefully within Cohn's orbit, trying to adhere to his ethical upbringing as a Mormon in this professional cesspool while at the same time realising that his marriage to Harper is doomed as an attempt to mask or overcome his own sexual orientation. The marriage is not only a sham for him, but it has also driven his wife (Denise Gough) to a distracted reliance on Valium.

These deeply personal conflicts and traumas are treated with a theatrical flair that allows characters who never meet in 'real' life - such as Harper and Prior - to encounter one another in dreams, while Roy Cohn in the extremity of his illness has a conversation with Ethel Rosenberg, who was executed over thirty years before as a result of his vindictive prosecution in a celebrated treason trial. Somehow Ethel calls the ambulance for Cohn - how could this possibly be happening? - and yet in the world of this play we accept the situation as a meaningful part of the fantasia. 

Unfortunately for me, the box office was so overwhelmed by demand for tickets that I have to wait until August to see Part Two. An Angel has crashed into Prior's life but I have weeks to wait to find out what happens next (I did not see the original production of the second part).

Hedda Gabler

by Henrik Ibsen

seen at the National Theatre (Lyttleton) on 25 January 2017

Ivo van Hove directs Ruth Wilson as Hedda, Kyle Soller as Tesman, and Rafe Spall as Judge Brack in a new version of Iben's play modernised by Patrick Marber. Chukwudi Iwuji is Lovborg, Sinéad Matthews is Mrs Elvsted, Kate Duchene is Aunt Juliana and Éva Magyar is the maid Berte.

The setting is a bare apartment, looking all the more bare for having large expanses of unpainted walls (plastered and awaiting attention) and comparatively little furniture. This partly evokes the Tesmans' pretensions in moving into an apartment beyond their means (ironically underscored in the text by Hedda's admission that she praised the apartment on a whim), and partly reflects the aridity of Hedda's interior life. Indeed, stripped of its late 19th century social claustrophobia, the play has to focus more intently on Hedda's trapped and disintegrating psyche. As the audience files in, the maid is seated impassively to one side while Hedda sits at the piano, back to the audience, and fiddles tunelessly with the notes.

The Red Barn

by David Hare

seen at the National Theatre (Lyttleton) on 20 December 2016

This play is based on a novel called La Main by Georges Simenon. Set in the eastern US, it concerns Donald Dodd (Mark Strong) and his wife Ingrid (Hope Davis), and their encounter with his friend Ray Sanders (Nigel Whitmey) and his wife Mona (Elizabeth Debicki). It is directed by Robert Icke and designed by Bunny Christie, with lighting by Paule Constable.

The play opens with a snowstorm in which the four characters are attempting to reach the Dodds' home after a party, their car having broken down. By the time three of them are safely inside, Ray has been lost in the storm; later his body is found even though Donald went out again to look for him. It transpires that he may not have spent long looking, though he was gone for hours, as Ingrid discovers many cigarette butts in the barn, which Donald burns - he had sat there for some hours.

The Plough and the Stars

by Sean O'Casey

seen at the National Theatre (Lyttleton) on 25 August 2016

Jeremy Herrin and Howard Davies have co-directed this revival of Sean O'Casey's play set in 1915 and 1916, marking the centenary of the Easter Rising in Dublin. The set, designed by Vicki Mortimer, shows us a crumbling tenement in Dublin - first the Clitheroe's flat, then a nearby pub, then the outside of the tenement, and finally the attic flat. A clever use of the revolve reveals the general seediness of the area, and, later, the dangers arising from the street fighting of the uprising.

The Deep Blue Sea

by Terence Rattigan

seen at the National Theatre (Lyttleton) on 15 August 2016

Carrie Cracknell directs Helen McCrory as Hester Collyer, Tom Burke as Freddie Page and Peter Sullivan as William Collyer in this fine revival of Rattigan's 1952 play. 

Tom Scutt's stage design reveals both the living room and the kitchen of the flat where 'Mr and Mrs Page' live, with the bedroom hinted at when necessary through a gauze screen. Behind the door to the flat we can glimpse the common stairway to other flats, and indeed the main walls of the storey above are also revealed instead of implying an implausibly high ceiling. This clever use of the space allows other residents to come and go (mainly one presumes leaving for work in the morning and returning in the evening), reminding us that we are being shown just one crisis in one flat amongst thousands.

Waste

by Harley Granville Barker

seen at the National Theatre (Lyttleton) on 27 February

This production is directed by Roger Michell and designed by Hildegard Bechtler, and features Charles Edwards as Henry Trebell, Sylvestra le Touzel as Frances Trebell and Olivia Williams as Amy O'Connell.

The play, banned on its initial publication in 1907, was revised in the 1920s though its subject matter was still controversial. This production uses the later version of the play, in which, among other things, the character of Amy O'Connell is portrayed as more active in creating the brief but catastrophic liaison between herself and Henry Trebell. The consequences - an unwanted child and a fatal illegal abortion - lead to all manner of waste: the child and mother dead, the promising career of the father in ruins (causing his own suicide), the political establishment seen to be immovably patrician, self-serving and misogynistic. But, crucially, everyone is complicit and no-one spotless.

Jane Eyre

based on the novel by Charlotte Brontë

seen at the National Theatre (Lyttleton) on 25 October 2015

The company under director Sally Cookson devised this theatrical adaptation originally in two parts for the Bristol Old Vic, but further work has reduced it to one part for the version at the National. it features Madeleine Worrall as Jane Eyre, with Felix Hayes as Rochester and Melanie Marshall as Bertha Mason. Craig Edwards, Laura Elphinstone, Simone Saunders and Maggie Tagney take all the other parts, supported by three musicians. The set is designed by Michael Vale.

Three Days in the Country

by Patrick Marber based on A Month in the Country by Ivan Turgenev

seen at the National Theatre (Lyttleton) on 21 October 2015

Directed by Patrick Marber and designed by Mark Thompson, this version of Turgenev's play stars Amanda Drew as Natalya, John Light as Arkady, John Simm as Rakitin, Lily Sacofsky as Vera and Mark Gatiss as Shpigelsky.

The arrival of a young tutor at a Russian provincial country house triggers various crises amongst people who have been living together without formally acknowledging their feelings for a very long time. Arkady married Natalya on impulse - his friend Rakitin was with him when he first saw her, and wishes that he had acted first. Now he is a visitor to the estate, hardly able to bear being there but unable to keep away. Both Natalya and her ward Vera fall for the new tutor, and meanwhile there are subplots in which an unprepossessing neighbour wishes to marry Vera, while the doctor Shpigelsky makes an extraordinary proposal to a spinster in the household.

Light Shining in Buckinghamshire

by Caryl Churchill

seen at the National Theatre (Lyttleton) on 16 April 2015

The play, directed by Lyndsey Turner, features a cast of eighteen speaking actors taking some twenty-seven parts supported by forty-four members of the Community Company, a group created from the outreach work of the National Theatre's Learning Department.

'Light Shining' looks at the English Civil War and the Commonwealth not as a conventional history play dramatising pivotal historical events (the King's duplicity, the battles, and so forth) but rather through a whole series of vignettes in which ordinary people grapple with the perplexing ideas of their time: dissent, obedience, millennial hopes, freedom, bondage, religious faith. The first half closes with scenes from the Putney Debates of 1647, taken from the transcripts of the sessions. Here, significant historical characters such as Oliver Cromwell and his son-in-law Henry Ireton are indeed present, but there is no attempt to characterise them or to provide their 'back story' - the focus is entirely on the debate concerning democratic representation.

Man and Superman

by Bernard Shaw

seen at the National Theatre (Lyttleton) 4 March 2015

This production is directed by Simon Godwin with Ralph Fiennes as John Tanner, Indira Varma as Ann Whitefield, Nicholas le Prevost as Roebuck Ramsden and Tim McMullen as Mendoza. Though the text has been edited, the performance includes the third act dream/discussion known as 'Don Juan in Hell'.

The design by Christopher Oram wittily refers to the Edwardian era in which the play was published (1903) and first performed (1905) while enclosing the stage in a cloudy perspex box through which light is suffused in varying colours. For the scene in Hell the perspex walls are almost all that is present, glowing white to underscore Shaw's paradoxical views on lightness and darkness, hell and heaven. But there are quirky anachronisms all the more effective for being unexplained - the play opens with a Desert Island Discs episode featuring John Tanner, and later, although he has an old fashioned open topped sports car, and a chauffeur (as required by the text), he also receives text messages on a smartphone.

Dara

adapted by Tanya Ronder from Shahid Nadeem's play

seen at the National Theatre (Lyttleton) 6 February 2015

This play, originally performed in Pakistan, has been adapted into English. It tells of the rise of Aurangzeb, who succeeded his father Shah Jahan as Mughal Emperor in 1659 by eliminating his brothers, in particular the crown prince Dara.

The play is mainly concerned with the critical events of 1659, but includes a number of explanatory flashbacks (the earliest to 30 years before when Shah Jahan's sons and daughters were still teenagers), and a final scene in 1707 when Aurangzeb was 89 and close to death.