Nye is Aneurin ‘Nye’ Bevan, Labour activist, famed orator, who became Health and Housing Minister in Clement Attlee’s post-World War II government. He transformed the welfare state in Britain and created the National Health Service in 1948.
Tim Price’s play takes a sympathetic non-critical approach to his life and career in a series of fragmentary flashbacks. Rufus Norris’s fast-moving and highly theatrical production is wittily choreographed by Steven Hoggett and Jess Williams to create a spectacular epic which is both real and surreal.
62-year-old Nye is discovered in a hospital bed, dying. He has interactions with his wife, Jennie Lee, and his best friend, Archie Lush. Sedated by morphine, he has memories of his miner father and childhood. His dreams and hallucinations include his verbal fights with local mine owners which are comically caricatured.
Michael Sheen is Bevan. He wears striped pyjamas and remains on stage throughout. Sheen has the assertiveness, combativeness, audacity and charm the role requires; his confrontations with Winston Churchill and Clement Attlee are neatly played.
The designer is Vicki Mortimer. The set is a hospital ward and its green curtains swish back and forth to create different locations economically and speedily: school, bar, library and parliament. There is a photo montage in huge close-up of doctors as monsters with angry faces, voicing their opposition to nationalisation.
One of the most striking sequences is of Nye as a stammering schoolboy, being beaten by a sadistic Dickensian headmaster who uses his crutches as a cane. The other children in the class try to protect him.
The production has a big cast playing multiple roles. There is plenty of drive and energy plus a very strong visual impact. It is one of the best and most enjoyable productions Rufus Norris and the National Theatre have staged.
Nye will transfer to Wales Millennium Centre in Cardiff in May. For more information and tickets follow this link.
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