Review by Simon Jenner, July 10 2025
The more we see Tim Price’s Nye, the more some wonder at snobbery in some quarters: withholding five stars for the most spectacularly-realised recent history play. One with the biggest heart, the biggest political stick. That’s why it’s dangerously popular; that’s why this government won’t love it more than the last. That’s why it’s back. From cradle to grave, from a hospital bed in 1960. Nye returns to the National’s Olivier Theatre with Michael Sheen as bed-bound Nye Bevan, dying his life by lightning flashes. The same team and nearly all the original cast – 20 of 25 – are directed by outgoing artistic director Rufus Norris till August 16th.
Michael Sheen, Sharon Small and Jason Hughes. Photo Credit: Johan Persson
Since his first incarnation, Sheen’s famously cancelled a million pounds of debt and founded (and will helm) a new Welsh National Theatre. He’s in danger of becoming almost as iconic in Wales as Bevan.
Bevan’s founding the NHS exposes it was in the teeth of the BMA and initially most doctors – here relegated to a virid on—screen haunting, like a bunch of dementors. That’s one way you might hallucinate coming out of morphine; a device for Nye’s life-story, crimped and stranded.
Mostly chronological, everything’s diaphanously realised in hospital, Sheen in pinkish-striped pyjamas, hopping in and out of bed (open marriage with Jennie Lee alluded to).
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 stage. There’s singing (led exhilaratingly by Sheen) with recorded orchestra at the height of anesthesia. Will Stuart’s music, adopting Harold Arlen’s “Get Happy” swirls round Donato Wharton’s spectral ECG sounds; or, more sinister, serried ranks of the BMA.
So beds wheel on and off, triple curtains descend 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 obligatory x-rays dropped in from the flies.
Choreography delights in three beds upended with patients inside: an appropriately Corbyn moment when ordinary people speak from them to 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.
Nye’s childhood features crazed schoolmaster Mr Orchard (Matthew Bulgo, thrashing about with two canes), Nye championed by lifelong friend Archie Lush (Jason Hughes, replacing Roger Evans, the only major cast-change) who pushes him into a library (a delirious book ballet) to swerve his stammer with alternative words for those beginning with C.
Interpersonal conflict we see only in flashes. Archie’s sometime antagonist (over Bevan’s unconscious body), Jennie Lee (Sharon Small). Scottish working-class, youngest MP at 24, Lee put her political life on hold, becoming 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 normal marriage… I’ve had affairs. He’s had affairs.”
Small’s Lee is incisive, yet despite the essay (one of just two) devoted to her in the programme, relegated dramatically as Lee was in life. Small’s and Hughes’ best moments come gouging grief out of each other.
Inevitable home-conflict motifs are picked out as admiring Nurse Ellie (Kazrena James) morphs into Nye’s sister Arianwen, accusing Nye of deserting family responsibilities for politics. It doesn’t entirely ring true. David Bevan (Rhodri Meilir’s primary role) not only dies in his son’s arms, but enjoys an emblematic, medicalised role at the beginning and end of the second half. Not a dry eye for Nye here, moving to The Corn is Green territory; but effective.
Nye though signals slyly to contemporary politics. And shockingly since 2024, Nye underscores the betrayal of the “NHS reform or die” ultimatum. Back in the 1940s Nye’s hurdles include 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: slyly 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.
There’s neat doubling of Tony Jayawardena as authority figure Doctor Dain asked by Lee not to reveal the truth; and his memorable Churchill. More manipulative even than Morrison, a master of strategy along with partial military incompetence, positioning himself as dark national saviour.
Just how dark (the Bengal famine) obviously isn’t touched on. 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. He teaches compromise.
Yet Nye, 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. Joshua McCord as Speaker, Ross Foley as schoolboy Ross Evans, Hannah McPake as terrified Mrs Jones and the Cleaner; Nicholas Khan, Rebecca Killick, early socialist supporter and angst-ridden mother Lucy Pritchard; Jacob Coleman, Mark Matthews, Ashley Mejri, Gabriel Akamo (Mr Fury), Mali O’Donnell, Sara Otung, Gareth Tempest.
Two hours 40 semaphors a life as panto; no crisis lands for long enough. But Price vindicates Nye and the ideals he springs from. The spectre of a socialist career swirled cradle-to-grave in morphine is, given the NHS, an irresistible conceit.
Sheen seems born to play Nye in his wig-helmet of auburn-grey. On seeing this first, it seemed Sheen’s never given quite enough to dig into the coal-hard grief literally gnawing Nye. Now his Nye’s grown, as Sheen has.
Through choreographic sweep, Price crafts a necessary, traditionally-inflected warning. It’s more than enough. A must-see with the finest last line since Good.
Production Designer Jon Driscoll, Revival Co-Director Francesca Goodridge, Casting Alastair Coomer CDG, Chloe Blake and Martin Poile CDG, Dialect Coach Alice White, Company Voice Coach Cathleen McCarran
Consultant Medical Advisor Matt Morgan, Associate Set Designer Matt Hellyer, Associate Lighting Designer Lucy Adams, Associate Projection Designer Gemma Carrington
Producer Padraig Cusack, Production Manager Mekel Edwards. Photo Credit Johan Persson
Tony Jayawardena and Ensemble. Photo Credit: Johan Persson
