Yet while Andrews lends a pin-sharp emotional clarity to Sophocles, he fails to find a theatrical language to match Bergman’s cinematic artistry. It feels a bit of a cop out to rely on the same techniques of camera and screen to summon Bergman’s evasive explorations of duality and selfhood, power and captivity, fiction and reality, not to mention his famous, startling images: the faces of both women meld together on film here, as they do in the original. Live camera is an overused technique in theatre, too. There’s little here to match Persona’s uncanny claustrophobia and ambiguous visual power. Andrews beautifully rethinks Sophocles but proves unequal to Bergman.
Hoss and Blanchett are entirely watchable, although Hoss has the edge, her Electra ravaged by anguish but also amusingly prone to adolescent petulance. As Elisabet, her extraordinary face offers a panoply of feeling: restless, watchful, tearful, furtive. That she and Alma are trapped in the same self-sabotaging forcefield as Electra and Clytemnestra offers a thematic neatness to this beguiling evening, but it can’t conceal its frustrations.
Until Oct 10. Tickets: 020 3989 5455; nationaltheatre.org.uk
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