Blanchett, Sandra Oh and Letitia Wright join National Theatre’s 2026 season

Cate Blanchett, Sandra Oh and Letitia Wright are among the names announced for the National Theatre’s 2026 season, a largely female-led line-up that the theatre’s artistic director, Indhu Rubasingham, says will "theatrically explode". Oh will make her National Theatre debut in an adaptation of Molière’s social satire The Misanthrope directed by Rubasingham.

Blanchett and German actor Nina Hoss will lead an experimental pairing of Sophocles’ Electra and Ingmar Bergman’s film Persona, directed by Benedict Andrews. Wright leads Tracey Scott Wilson’s newsroom thriller The Story, directed by Clint Dyer; Lesley Manville will appear in an adaptation of Les Liaisons Dangereuses at the Lyttleton in spring; and Francesca Mills will star in The Rise and Fall of Little Voice, opening in December.

The coverage notes Oh recently made her operatic debut at the Met in New York and has been playing Olivia in Twelfth Night at the Delacorte in Central Park. The inclusion of high-profile casting has prompted criticism that the National could be open to accusations of star-casting; Nadine Rennie, co-chair of the Casting Directors’ Guild, has said such casting is "killing" the industry by making life hard for mid-scale theatres and destroying "audiences’ intellects".