Cate Blanchett had a message for the audience at London’s National Theatre after a performance of her new play, Electra/Persona: please stop filming.
In a video shared on social media Saturday, Blanchett addressed the audience after the curtain call, asking anyone who had recorded the performance to put their phones away.
“There are few places on this planet where we can simply be together and be present,” she says in the clip, still wearing her stage costume of a black T-shirt and baggy black trousers.
“I understand you like filming the curtain call — and it is kind of flattering in a way — but for anyone who is filming the show, please don’t, because it spoils it for the next group of people who come in and are present with us. So thank you very much.”
Her comments were met with applause from the audience.
Written and directed by Benedict Andrews, Electra/Persona combines Sophocles’ tragedy Electra with Ingmar Bergman’s cryptic 1966 film Persona.
The play incorporates some audience participation at the start, when Blanchett asks a member of the crowd to flip a coin to determine which characters she and her co-star, Nina Hoss, will play.
The National Theatre’s official synopsis reads: “Electra. A daughter consumed by grief and rage, clinging to the idea of justice as her world comes apart. Persona. 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.”
In her three-star review for The Independent, Alice Saville wrote: “Andrews staged an A-list adaptation of sadistic roleplay-filled classic The Maids a decade ago at Sydney Theatre Company (Blanchett, Isabelle Huppert and Elizabeth Debicki all starred). Maybe it’s muscle memory, but a lot of the same ideas pattern through this production.
“Electra shrugs on an extravagant fur coat to send up her mother’s grand, heedless ways. Then, Clytemnestra makes her younger daughters reenact Iphigenia’s death, even as their tears start to fall. The women in this family start to blur together, entwining to create a witty, abstracted reimagining of a classic – but it ends all too soon.
“Suddenly, we’re in a medical facility where celebrated actress Elisabet Vogler is taking refuge after having a breakdown that stole her voice, midway through a run performing in Electra. Hoss plays this role hiding under a large fur coat, training a camera on her face so it projects her every tormented emotion onto a giant black and white screen. As nurse Alma, Blanchett pours her secrets out to this mute star, longing in vain for a single word of validation.”
Theater etiquette has been a hot topic of late, with performers increasingly calling out audience members for talking, filming and using their phones during performances.
Earlier this year, Rosamund Pike called out an audience member for texting during her performance of Inter Alia in London.
“I just wanted to say for anyone going to the theatre, it’s a huge thing that we’re trying to give you. I am trying to tell you a story, and I’m feeling you, and I hope you’re feeling me too,” she told the crowd.
“Somebody was texting in this part,” she said, referring to one of the more emotional and important scenes in Suzie Miller’s play. “You know who you are and I’m not going to single you out.
“Maybe it was very important, and maybe you’re a doctor, and you’re saving someone’s life, and I hope you are, but we do see these, we do feel them.”
