Michael Sheen in NYE. Photo by Johan Persson.On the huge Olivier stage, director Rufus Norris manages to strike the right balance between informative and entertaining as he guides us through milestones in Bevan’s life and career.
Set designer Vicki Mortimer has deployed a succession of NHS green curtains, hospital beds and even lasers, to conjure flashback scenes from the Minister of Health and Housing’s memory, as he lays recovering from surgery. We encounter a library where he learns circumventing words to control his stammer. We visit the rebellious classroom of a tyrannical schoolmaster, and schmooze amidst the stiff old-boy politesse exhibited between Parliamentarians at Westminster. At one point, Nye’s coal-miner father David (Rhodri Meilir), whose ailing lungs were ravaged by black lung, descends with him into the depths of darkness to commune with the very coal face whose latent power has the ability to sustain and destroy lives and communities.
As with all renowned figures, there can be a tendency to retrospectively laud and praise their intentions and achievements whilst glossing over their failings and failures. Here however, there’s an inference that the main driver in Bevan’s determination to attain healthcare for all, may have been an attempt to assuage his personal guilt at not being present to assist his sister Arianwen (Kezrena James) in caring for his dying father. Reference is also made to the all-too-easy acceptance of his wife’s sacrifice of her own burgeoning political career when they married, so that she could focus on supporting him in his ambitions. As Jennie Lee, Sharon Small proves more than adequate to the task of conveying the feisty young Scottish MP whom Bevan meets and woos in his youth and the more pragmatic, dutiful companion she becomes lin later years. Her bedside scene with Bevan's long term mentor, friend and confident Archie Lush (Jason Hughes) hints at the compartmentalisation of lives lived in the public spotlight and personal arrangements agreed behind closed doors.
In its primary objective of recalling the life and career of this challenging firebrand, NYE succeeds in conveying the very real societal injustice and combination of intellectual and emotional drive required to challenge and effect real change. The man’s legacy will forever be associated with the NHS — a truly unquantifiable human achievement and one which we should do well to remember — but, as we all know, perfection is rarely found in an individual, and it is rarer still in a politician. As Churchill (Tony Jayawardena) reminds him: The thing you need to learn about power, Aneurin, is this: Compromise everything to get it, because once you have it, you no longer have to compromise.
NYE has a running time of 2 hours 40 minutes (including interval) and performances continue at the Olivier until 16th August.
