Cate Blanchett, Sandra Oh and Letitia Wright will form part of the National Theatre’s starry, female-led lineup for its 2026 season that its artistic director promises will “theatrically explode”.
Oh, the Killing Eve and Grey’s Anatomy star, makes her National Theatre debut in an adaptation of Molière’s social satire The Misanthrope, which is directed by the theatre’s director and joint chief executive, Indhu Rubasingham.
The Oscar winner Cate Blanchett and the German actor Nina Hoss lead an experimental combination of Sophocles’ myth Electra and Ingmar Bergman’s classic film about a mute actress and her psychiatric nurse, Persona, into one show that is directed by Benedict Andrews.
The British stars Wright, Lesley Manville and Francesca Mills are also part of the lineup.
Wright leads Tracey Scott Wilson’s newsroom thriller The Story, directed by Clint Dyer; Manville joins the adaptation of Les Liaisons Dangereuses at the Lyttleton in spring; and Mills stars in The Rise and Fall of Little Voice, which opens in December.
The big names could leave the National open to accusations of star-casting, something which the co-chair of the Casting Directors’ Guild, Nadine Rennie has said is “killing” the industry by making life hard for mid-scale theatres and destroying “audiences’ intellects”.
But Rubasingham, the first woman and the first person of colour to be appointed boss of the National Theatre, has not hidden her intention to create an agenda-setting programme that also proudly puts bums on seats.
Rubasingham grew up in Mansfield and went to the University of Hull to study drama before making her name at the Kiln Theatre, where her programme included Florian Zeller’s Family Trilogy, Lolita Chakrabarti’s Red Velvet and Zadie Smith’s Chaucer adaptation The Wife of Willesden.
She told an interviewer shortly after getting the job at the National that she was not “petrified” of the position as she had been when she started at the Kiln.
“There’s a sense I’ve done the job,” she said. “Yes, it’s much bigger, but the principles are the same. I’ve got to programme shows that sell tickets. I’ve got to have a narrative.”
The story she’s telling at the National seems to be one of bold, inventive theatre that is not afraid to court big names and take risks by putting someone like Oh, who recently made her operatic debut at the Met in New York at the Met and has been playing Olivia in Twelfth Night at the Delacorte in Central Park, on her stages.
Rubasingham said: “From bold new voices to international collaborators, this is a year that celebrates the full breadth of talent on our stages and behind the scenes. It’s a privilege to stage work that theatrically explodes, surprises and challenges us to see the world anew.
“Bringing this range of exhilarating productions to audiences in the UK and around the globe is what the National Theatre is all about.”
War Horse, which premiered in 2007 and has been on an extensive tour, will also return to the Southbank in May with a run on at the Olivier Theatre 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.
