Nye

(seen at the afternoon performance on 27th April 2024)

First, a word of advice. It seems that star names in big plays at the National Theatre have the habit of taking Saturday afternoons off if the monkey is going to be in the audience. Fiennes missed the matinee of “Dear England” the monkey attended, and Sheen was a no-show for this one. So if the monkey is booked for the same matinee you are, probably an idea to switch dates if you are a fan of any particular actor.

Leaving aside the truth that their understudies were fine in the roles, the fact is that the monkey didn’t see the original leads, so what follows may not resemble the performance other audiences will see.

Tim Price’s play had a difficult preview period with around an hour hacked off it by press night. It still feels like the first half could lose 15 minutes and the second another 15 plus having a little more structure applied, but it is basically sound enough to be discharged and assume family life – the exact aim of the NHS Price writes about.

Wearing lurid pyjamas (Kinnetua Isidore adhering alarmingly to the costume rule that the lead can be identified from the back of the auditorium – or in this case Parliament Square), Aneurin ‘Nye’ Bevan (Lee Mengo, in for absent Michael Sheen) has just come out of surgery.

In a brilliantly conceived ward (Vicki Mortimer – who comes up with an even better House of Commons later in the play), Nye is ignorant of his drugged state managing his terminal decline.

The fever dream takes us to his childhood, down a mine with his father and through his political career to the point where he launches the National Health Service, against all odds, on 5th July 1948.

Mengo is on a single bullish note throughout, from schoolboy bullied by a teacher and aided by loyal lifelong friend Archie (Roger Evans) to confronting his party leader Atlee (Stephanie Jacob as amusing as her desk) and Tony Jayawardena’s grumpily manipulative Churchill.

The problems in the piece emerge early as Rufus Norris with choreographers Steven Hoggett and Jess Williams give us the full “National Theatre” of exotic actor movement and trust exercises.

An “I’m Spartacus” schoolroom moment, and rather patronising “library sequence" both drag after initial impact, and a big dance number (which, to be fair, is highly entertaining) is somewhat reminiscent of the 2012 Olympic Opening Ceremony and sits curiously within the act.

Nye confronting the doctors’ union to negotiate their co-operation in the new service is a triumph for Jon Driscoll’s projection design; but, over-used, some of the human scale is lost in repetition.

Oddly, when projection is also used to represent patient suffering, the same occurs – clever, but drawn out and leaching humanity as it goes.

Being fair, Price gets a very (in)decent joke in during medical negotiations – though it is funnier seeing it decoded by many of the slow-to-twig audience than in the original telling. Possibly Sheen has better timing, though - the monkey is not sure.

So we wander through Nyes memories, meeting and marrying fellow politician Jennie Lee – Sharon Small giving her all in an excellent display of unwavering irritated loving support.

There are strong moments – the bright working class taking over the local council is a highlight, Kezrena James’s very real Nurse Ellie at the bedside, and the dawn of the NHS itself brings little lump to the throat.

Rather like the NHS has become, however, it is a blend of the perfect, the overblown and the simple sticking to redundant ideas when smoother solutions beg to be tried.

Mostly well staged and with a sound cast, it may not be a classic, but it is certainly a history lesson worth learning, and a warning of how the past could be our future - if we do not appoint and listen to those who really know what it is to lead life at both ends of the scale.