FringeReview UK 2024
Low Down
From the cradle to the grave, from a hospital bed in 1960. Eight months on from the 75th anniversary of the NHS’s founding in 1948, where else would you find Tim Price’s Nye with Michael Sheen as bed-bound Nye Bevan, dying his life by lightning flashes? It arrives at the Olivier directed by Rufus Norris till May 11th.
Sheen seems born to play Nye, politically as well as dramatically in his wig-helmet of auburn-grey.
On balance, with stakes as they are, the big picture’s more urgent, signalling political as well as class treachery. Through the choreographic sweep, Price crafts a necessary, traditionally-inflected warning. It’s more than enough. A must-see with perhaps the finest last line since Good.
Written by Tim Price, Directed by Rufus Norris, Set Designer Vicki Mortimer, and Costume Designer Kinnetia Isidore, Lighting Design Paule Constable, Co-Choreographers Steven Hoggett and Jess Williams, Composer Will Stuart, Sound Designer Donato Wharton
Production Designer Jon Driscoll, Casting Alastair Coomer CDG and Chloe Blake, Dialect Coach Patricia Logue, Company Voice Work Cathleen McCarran and Tamsin Newlands
Associate Medical Advisor Matt Morgan, Associate Director Francesca Goodridge, Associate Set Designer Matt Hellyer, Associate Costume Designer Zoe Thomas-Webb
Producer Padraig Cusack, Production Manager Jim Leaver.
Broadcast Team: Director Bridget Caldwell Lighting Director Gemma Sullivan, Sound Supervisor Conrad Fletcher, Script Supervisor Laura Vine.
Till May 11th
Review
From the cradle to the grave, from a hospital bed in 1960. Ten months on from the 75th anniversary of the NHS’s founding in 1948, where else would you find Tim Price’s Nye with Michael Sheen as bed-bound Nye Bevan, dying his life by lightning flashes? It arrives at the Olivier directed by Rufus Norris till May 11th. And on NT Live and NT at Home.
Bevan’s greatness lies in his founding the NHS: in the teeth of the BMA and initially most doctors – here relegated to a brilliant on—screen haunting, like a bunch of dementors. It’s the way you might hallucinate coming out of morphine. There’s latterly much use of that, as Sheen’s crimped into an explosively-politicised life-story, with several strands at once.
It’s mostly chronological, with everything diaphanously realised in hospital and Sheen in pinkish pyjamas, hopping in and out of bed (his open marriage with Jennie Lee alluded to, not dramatised).
Two things stand out, beyond Sheen’s central role. Vicki Mortimer’s set (and Kinnetia Isidore’s riff of period costumes) is almost the star here, alongside the sheer theatricality and movement of this production, with co-choreographers Steven Hoggett and Jess Williams. There’s no revolve but otherwise this is as almost as effective as recent Olivier triumphs – never a given with this tricky stage. There’s singing (led exhilaratingly by Sheen) with recorded orchestra at the height of anesthesia.
So beds wheel on and off, triple curtains descend and move from hospital light green (the set’s staple) to deeper green Westminster tiers for parliamentary debates, lit by Paule Constable whose work irradiates more than the obligatory x-rays dropped in from the flies.
There’s exhilarating moments too when some beds upend with patients inside: an appropriately Jeremy Corbyn moment when ordinary people are encouraged to speak from them to the raging council scenes perched on top, as Nye and others – Lee Mengo (cautious Jack Stockton, also Speaker), a sassy belligerent Neil Jones (Daniel Hawksford) and ambushing Gwen Davies (Remy Beasley) hone their political claws on hidebound municipal (literally bed)blockers.
We start with Nye’s childhood and bullying Mr Orchard (Matthew Bulgo, a crazed schoolmaster thrashing about with two canes), Nye championed by lifelong friend Archie Lush (Roger Evans) who pushes him into a library (a delirious book ballet) to serve his stammer with alternative words for those beginning with C.
Most effective though are those moments of interpersonal conflict we see only in flashes. Archie’s sometime antagonist (over Bevan’s unconscious body), Jennie Lee (Sharon Small).
Scottish working-class, yet the youngest MP to be elected at 24, Lee put her political life on hold (she lost her seat swiftly but got it back) becoming the great Minister for the Arts only after Bevan’s death. After an edgy courtship with overactive Nye the marriage isn’t dwelt on. “We don’t have a anormal marriage… I’ve had affairs. He’s had affairs.”
Small makes an incisive impression as Lee, yet despite the essay (one of just two) devoted to her in the programme, she’s relegated dramatically as she was in life. Small’s and Evans’ best moments come though when gouging grief out of each other
Another strand’s easily picked as Nurse Ellie (Kazrena James) morphs into Nye’s sister Arianwen who accuses Nye of deserting his family responsibilities for politics. But it doesn’t entirely ring true, as David Bevan (Rhodri Meillr’s primary role) not only dies in his son’s arms, but enjoys an emblematic and medicalised role at the beginning and end of the second half. Not a dry eye for Nye here, even moving to The Corn is Green territory; but effective.
Nye though signals slyly to our contemporary politics dedicated to destroying the NHS. Figures represent equivocal opposition. Initially cautious Clement Attlee (Stephanie Jacob, exact and hierarchical in a bald wig, also Matron), Michael Keane as a scornful Chamberlain, and a moment of New Labour’s prophesy in Jon Furlong.
He’s sinister as Herbert Morrison: as slyly sadistic, indeed murderous to Nye as his descendent – Peter Mandelson – is to Blair in Tony Blair: The Musical, and Mandelson’s folkloric identity elsewhere. There’s no mistaking Price’s intent here.
Above all there’s neat doubling of Tony Jayawardena as authority figure Doctor Dain asked by Lee not to reveal the truth; and his memorable Churchill. Not one we’re often presented with: more manipulative even than Morrison, a master of strategy along with partial military incompetence and positioning himself as dark national saviour.
Just how dark (the Bengal famine) isn’t touched on: this play’s bulging enough. But Churchill’s not caricatured: his stature as perhaps Nye’s only titanic equal is nicely played off. Jayawardena plants himself, literally in Sheen’s way.
Yet Bevan, like Small the outsider even in the Labour Party, delivers Churchill a killer paradox: “I am the only chance the working people have… The working class has never been united in my lifetime. Until you came along.”
The multi-roling cast uniformly glints and apparates. Dyfan Dwyfor as Speaker, Ross Foley as schoolboy Ross Doherty, Bea Holland as the Cleaner, Nicholas Khan, Rebecca Killick, early socialist supporter and angst-ridden mother Lucy Pritchard, Oliver Llewelyn-Jenkins, Mark Matthews Ashley Mejri, David Monteith (Mr Fury), Mall O’Donnell, Sara Otung.
At two hours 40 it’s a play signalling a life too briefly, with no crisis in it for long enough. But Price’s aim is clear: to examine both Nye and the socialist ideals he springs from. So a near-cradle-to-grave biopic is of great service. The spectral swirl of a committed life glimpsed before the end is, given the NHS, an irresistible conceit.
Sheen seems born to play Nye, politically as well as dramatically in his wig-helmet of auburn-grey. On seeing this first on stage, it seemed Sheen’s never given quite enough to dig into the coal-hard grief literally gnawing him. Seeing him in screen close-up and with so much of the drama realised in gesture, it’s now even clearer: we’re seeing a public, even epic Nye – flashed by his private self in a morphine dream.
Examining a constituent part might seem tempting: a small chamber play out of fighting the BMA, but less would be at stake there. Equally, Nye’s later resignation over NHS prescription charges and later differences with Labour aren’t touched on. Dramatically they won’t fit.
On balance, with stakes as they are, the big picture’s more urgent, signalling political as well as class treachery. Through the choreographic sweep, Price crafts a necessary, traditionally-inflected warning. It’s more than enough.
The screened close-ups, as ever skilfully wrought by broadcast director Bridget Caldwell shows facets like the radiance of Sheen’s face at the end underscoring just how moving this play is. A must-see with perhaps the finest last line since Good.
