Nye

An evening at the theatre watching another play about the difficult birth of the NHS, this was a perfect mix of politics and sentiment that absolutely hit the spot for me.  Our pre-show conversation had been all about the hole that the country is in, and what could possibly shake us out of it, and it was like this production heard us and carried on the debate.  

This is a biography of Nye Bevan  (Michael Sheen) as a patient of the NHS he brought into being, and from his hospital bed dosed up with morphine, recalling his life through surreal dreams.  Episodic and hallucinatory, we get shown the bullying he endured as a child partly due to his stammer, the death of his miner father through black lung , the wonder of a library with books ‘for free!!’ and the development of political nouse as he worked his way through committees and councils, including the Tredegar Medical Aid Society (the model for the NHS) before ending up in Parliament.  

The challenges of turning dreams into reality, and how to use compromise and pragmatism without losing sight of the goals are all explored here, against the realities of political systems that strip the life out of brave ideas.  What was so powerful for me was the mix of sentimentality too, allowing us to again feel the pull of a dream that treats citizens fairly and well, at a time where we are well on the way to losing it all again.  

A pretty simple set consisting of hospital type curtains and beds was very effective in creating everything from the obvious hospital wards to parliament.  Sheen plays Nye as obstinate and childlike in many ways and probably a lot more cuddly and likeable than I suspect he was in real life. I enjoyed Tony Jayawardena’s performance as Winston Churchill (a baddie here as an opponent of the NHS) and Stephanie Jacob was great as Attlee with a steerable desk, balancing the realpolitik and the left and right of the party with the risk of giving Nye the power to do what he wanted. 

I read the reviews after writing this and they are generally a bit underwhelmed, particularly with the small proportion of time allocated to the actual machinations of getting the NHS into being.  I agree up to a point but I thought the time before, showing why it was needed then (and still needed now) all added to its power.  I loved it, from the idealism through the big song and dance number to the political machinations and even the touch of sentimentality.  It highlights that change needs both vision and pragmatism and if not quite a call to arms it made a stirring case for being bloody minded in going for what is right.  After the curtain call some facts were highlighted on the backdrop.  The fact check at the end of a play has become a bit of a common trope in dramas recently, but no less powerful for that.  Huge reductions in infant mortality and a 12 year increase in life expectancy in the few years after the introduction of the NHS.   There’s the economic case right there.

Anyway, I enjoyed it a lot and it may have given me a bit of a lump in my throat at the end.  Recommended.