National Theatre, Nye Review ★★★★★

A fast moving, unashamedly emotional broad sweep of Aneurin Bevan’s extraordinary life, culminating in the creation of the NHS in 1948, Tim Price’s new play Nye starts in 1960 with Bevan lying in his death bed in an NHS hospital, his life flashing before him in a series of morphine-induced heightened reality dreams, often bombastic, at times surreal and always visionary like the man himself.


Roger Evans (Archie Lust), Michael Sheen (Nye Bevan) & Sharon Small (Jennie Lee) in Nye at the National Theatre © Johan Persson
Clad in his regulation pink pyjamas, Michael Sheen is central to every scene, offering one of his trademark transfixing performances, and even looking a little like Nye himself (how does he do it?). He is the schoolboy from the Welsh coal mining town of Tredegar, sadistically bullied by a teacher for his stammering, who became a voracious reader and eloquent speaker; the young Labour recruit who believes that social injustice must be fought; the trades union and community organiser; ever the indomitable rebel, a politician of conviction; an MP scornful of the arcane, middle-class conventions of a stale Parliament, ‘charging about the place like a rutting stag,’ in the words of his fellow MP and later wife Jennie Lee (Sharon Small).

And finally, upon being made Minister for Health and Housing by PM Clement Attlee (puzzlingly but competently played by a woman, Stephanie Jacob) in the post-war Labour government, he is the man who dreamt up ‘the most civilised step this country has ever taken’ – a National Health Service, free and accessible to all at the point of use – and persevered, undaunted by fierce opposition from the doctors, aided and abetted by the Tories.

Bevan’s father, a lifelong miner, died of ‘black lung’, the miners’ disease contracted by inhaling coal dust: in a moving scene, Bevan cradles his dying father and promises to save him and ‘save everybody.’ The scale of his task is illustrated when, clutching his newly acquired ministerial red box, he is overwhelmed by the need in the country: figures projected onto a monochrome screen tell of the lack of access to local hospitals and unaffordable medical procedures that kept health care out of reach to so many.

Rufus Norris directs a large cast in a vibrant production with Vicki Mortimer's ingenious sets based on green hospital curtains and beds, that adapt from hospital wards to a council chamber, a library, even the House of Commons, but never let us forget the centrality of the NHS.

Act I works better than Act II, every scene plausible, even when the entire cast breaks into song; Act II, by contrast, crams lengthy exposition into a couple of scenes that jar a little: a war-time encounter between Nye and Winston Churchill, who reminds Nye that he is one the most hated men in the country, seen as a traitor for his constant denunciations of the conduct of the war; and a bedside confrontation between Jennie Lee and Nye’s faithful friend Archie Lust (Roger Evans), packed with information about Nye’s family life.

That said, landing at a time when the NHS itself is in its sick bed, Nye is a powerful, topical play that deftly portrays the socio-political complexities within which an extraordinary politician had a dream and made it reality.

Nye is a co-production between the NT and Wales Millennium Centre. It will transfer to Wales Millennium Centre 18 May to 1 June 2024.
A filmed performance of Nye will be broadcast worldwide from 23 April 2024 www.nye,ntlive.com