Roger Evans and Michael-Sheen. Image by Johan-Persson

Nye by Tim Price – National Theatre: Olivier, London

Tim Price’s new play about Aneurin Bevan, directed by Rufus Norris on the Oliver stage, is a political biography told from the hospital bed which Nye will not be leaving. On morphine, his terminal cancer kept from him by his wife, fellow MP Jennie Lee, he relives a hallucinatory, often surreal version of his life, from the son of a Tredegar miner to Britain’s most successful left wing politician. As Bevan, Michael Sheen puts in a performance that the whole play revolves around, sometimes literally as nurses wheel dance bed-bound patients around the ward, fellow politicians bear him aloft, and the production threatens to break into song and dance. Sheen is powerful, expertly conveying Nye from a small boy to a dying man with nothing more than changes in physical behaviour, always wearing the same pair of pyjamas.

Norris’ direction brings an intoxicatingly surreal air to much of the production. A bullying teacher stalks the stage with two giant canes, like a spider. Parliamentarians advance on Bevan in menacing chorus line. A South Wales library comes to life, offering its books to the young Nye. The play’s main problem is that this intentionally cartoonish style works against the political analysis that provides its credibility. Political documentary plays are much harder to get right than we imagine, post-James Graham and, while ‘Nye’ is highly informative, it also begs questions. For instance, the treatment of Jennie Lee, excellently played by Sharon Small, seems reductive. It is impossible to know what basis the scenes in which she refuses to tell Nye how ill he is, before realising she way wrong, have in truth, but they seem to throw a woman who was an important politician in her own right under the bus for dramatic effect. There is also an overall sense that the play is only open to the mildest of criticism of its central hero.

Nevertheless, there is much to admire in the show. The cast have an excellent time, with some enjoyable weird performances – Nicholas Khan as a sneering Neville Chamberlain, Tony Jayawardana as a hilarious Churchill, Stephanie Jacob as Atlee in a bald wig, and Jon Furlong as a gleefully malicious Herbert Morrison. Kezrena James also stands out as a compassionate but practical nurse, the representation of the system Nye established against determined opposition, including from some in his party, and from the British Medical Association, who prioritised their members’ personal interests over the collective until the last possible moment.

Vicki Mortimer’s set, consisting of hospital screens that pull across the stage, at one point forming Commons benches, is very clever. The play’s timing is not accidental. The conflict between right and left in the Labour Party has clear messages for the current Opposition, and indeed Ed Miliband was in the audience the night I saw the play. The National Theatre has an important role in delivering new perspectives on our history to influence the way we move forward, and ‘Nye’ definitely does that. There is no bad time for a reminder of the reasons the NHS was set up, the entrenched interests that opposed it, and the benefits it has provided, but this is a production with an urgent message about the decisions we will, as a nation, make very soon.