Nye, NT Live

 

An NT Live show, live theatre beamed into the cinema.  A focus on the great Nye Bevan.

But what sort of beast was this play?  Biography? Social History? Political Polemic? Entertainment? A bit of everything, including a full blown song and dance routine.

Social History - Events around one of the most important events in UK history, from the perspective of a leading member it's most important government. Showing socialism can work. Showing the huge improvements it brought.

Political polemic - very much so, and necessarily so, at a time when the NHS, as a principle, is under attack more than ever. When the need, and underlying principle, remain as much as ever. It may have gone a bit wayward, but that's the nature of all big beasts over time.

Entertainment - definitely. Funny, warm, human, with great performances.

Structure has Nye dying, and dreaming of past life. Childhood, union leader, councillor, backbench MP and maverick, Churchill opponent, Minister and pioneer. Lover too. But always clear what period he's in, be it with his dying dad, or Clem as PM.

And Biography?  Partly so.  It does tend to hagiography at times, but still gives some of Nye's imperfections as a human being. Getting women to look after him. His inability to compromise (up to a point). But the passion for socialism is there, the things that made him a great man are very much there.

The performances are strong, with Sheen magnificent and at his passionate best.  If anything grated it was have Clem Attlee played by a woman.  Nothing wrong with that in itself - but the voice made hom sound too much like the Wicked Witch of Grantham at times, a later, lesser, PM who was not fit to lick Attlee's boots, and did so much to detroy his achievements.

The play is structured around Bevan slowly dying in his bed.  In an NHS hospital of course (which does not reflect the actual event).  In dreams and conversations and rants he takes us through tyhe events and struggles that brough about the dream of free health care for all, for a service that did as much for the poor as for the rich.  Of course the story is romatnticised, but it was, in many ways, a romantic ideal in itself.  Most of all it feels ocntemporary, necessary.

How we need his likes again.  But what chance, when a good man like Corbyn is charater assassinated into oblivion by the right wing media?