Play
Electra/Persona
A coin is tossed before each performance to decide which of two actors plays the vengeful daughter and which the mother she wants dead.
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The story
Benedict Andrews pairs Sophocles' Electra, in which a daughter seeks revenge on her mother Clytemnestra for the murder of her father Agamemnon, with Ingmar Bergman's 1966 film Persona. In the second part, an actress named Elisabeth stops speaking in the middle of a performance of Electra and is sent to recuperate by the sea in the care of a nurse, Alma. The same two performers carry both halves, with the Electra actor becoming Elisabeth and the Clytemnestra actor becoming Alma.
In the room
The two parts run back to back without an interval. The colour and blood of the Greek half give way to black-and-white live video in the Persona section, where faces are filmed close up and projected onstage.
Good fit if you like
Greek revenge tragedy, fraught mother and daughter relationships, live camera work onstage and stories about roles and identity.
Details
- From 1 Sept 2026
Running time not recorded.
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Cast & crew
No cast or crew recorded yet.