Nye Bevin – Donmar

At London’s Donmar Warehouse, Lucy Kirkwood’s The Human Body depicts the establishing of the National Health Service through the eyes of a Shropshire doctor. At the National Theatre, Tim Price’s new play tells the story of its founder Aneurin ‘Nye’ Bevan.

Staged by the NT’s outgoing artistic director Rufus Norris and designed by Vicki Mortimer, Price’s play frames Bevan’s life – from his childhood in Wales to his parliamentary career as a Labour minister – through a series of fantastical flashbacks from his 1960 hospital bed.

It stars Michael Sheen in the title role, returning to the National Theatre after his acclaimed performance in Dylan Thomas’ Under Milk Wood in 2021, and runs until mid-May before transferring to Wales Millennium Centre.

Nye is a satisfying, meaty, yet never less than nimble play that intertwines the personal and political and wears its copious research commendably lightly.

Norris will leave the National Theatre next year to be succeeded by Indhu Rubasingham. His own productions at the venue have received mixed responses: Small Island and Mosquitoes were critical hits; Macbeth and Hex were decidedly not.

There is particular admiration for designer Mortimer’s fluid set, which transforms the curtains and beds of the hospital in which Bevan spent his final months into the environments of his life, from his school to the House of Commons.

Michael Sheen has spent more than three decades working across stage and screen, most recently appearing on the London stage in Lyndsey Turner’s staging of’ Under Milk Wood in 2021. His pyjama-clad performance is full of charm and charisma and is fiery but unassuming. He conveys Nye’s weaknesses and strengths, doubts and bloody-mindedness with supreme conviction.

Nye is a vital play because Bevan is a vital man of British history. It succeeds in showing us just how high the hurdles he faced were. When he describes prewar healthcare – one service for the rich, one for the poor – it rings of today’s two-tiered system. “I want to give you your dignity,” he says, as the NHS launches. It is a rousing moment yet contains a terrible, tragic irony, given what is coming to pass with his precious legacy.