Letitia Wright, Cate Blanchett and Sandra Oh to star in National Theatre shows | National Theatre
Cate Blanchett, Sandra Oh and Letitia Wright will form part of the National Theatre’s starry, female-led cast for the 2026 season, which the artistic director promises will “explode theatrically”.
The Oh, the Killing Eve and Grey’s Anatomy star makes her National Theater debut in an adaptation of Molière’s social satire The Misanthrope, directed by the theatre’s director and general manager Indhu Rubasingham.
Oscar winner Cate Blanchett and German actor Nina Hoss direct an experimental combination of Sophocles’ legend Electra and Ingmar Bergman’s classic film about a mute actress and her psychiatric nurse Persona in a single show directed by Benedict Andrews.
British stars Wright, Lesley Manville and Francesca Mills are also in the squad.
Wright stars in Tracey Scott Wilson’s newsroom thriller The Story, directed by Clint Dyer; Manville attended an adaptation of Les Liaisons Dangereuses at Lyttleton in the spring; and Mills stars in The Rise and Fall of Little Voice, which will be released in December.
Nadine Rennie, co-chairman of the Casting Directors Guild, said big names could leave the National open to accusations of star casting. “killing” the industry By making life difficult for medium-sized theaters and destroying the “intelligence of the audience”.
But Rubasingham, the first woman and the first black person to be appointed patron of the National Theatre, also makes no secret of her intention to create an agenda-setting program that puts the bums proudly in the seats.
Rubasingham grew up in Mansfield and went to the University of Hull to study drama, and before making his name at the Kiln Theatre, his programs included Florian Zeller’s Family Trilogy, Lolita Chakrabarti’s Red Velvet and Zadie Smith’s Chaucer adaptation The Wife of Willesden.
He told an interviewer shortly after getting a job He said that at the National he was not “petrified” by the position as he was when he started the Bakery.
“There’s a feeling that I’m doing the job,” he said. “Yes, it’s much bigger, but the principles are the same. I have to program shows that sell tickets. I have to have a narrative.”
The story he tells at the National seems to be one of bold, creative theater, unafraid to flirt with big names and take risks by casting someone like Oh, who recently portrayed him. Opera debut at the Met She performs as Olivia in Twelfth Night at the Met in New York and at the Delacorte in Central Park.
Rubasingham said: “From bold new voices to international collaborators, this year is a celebration of all the talent on our stages and behind the scenes. It’s a privilege to stage work that explodes theatrically, surprises and forces us to see the world anew.”
“It is the National Theatre’s aim to bring these exciting productions to audiences in the UK and around the world.”
War Horse, which premiered in 2007 and has toured extensively, will also return to the Southbank with a show at the Olivier Theater in May as it approaches its 20th anniversary.
There will also be two Broadway transfers, with Robert Hastie’s Hamlet and Alexander Zeldin’s The Other Place trying their luck on this side of the Atlantic.
