On Wednesday 20th March, we had a trip to The National Theatre to see a matinee performance of ‘Nye’, starring Michael Sheen.
A coach picked us up from Amersham and Gerrards Cross, and we arrived at the South Bank at about 1:30 pm, only slightly later than planned. We met a few of our party who had travelled in by train, and then David Powell picked up the tickets and distributed them, leaving us just over half an hour for a hasty lunch.
‘Nye’ tells the story of Aneurin Bevan, from his imagined death bed, under the influence of morphine, looking back over his life.
It was useful that we had been given a background of Bevan’s later life a couple of years ago when Neil Rees gave a talk about Aneurin Bevan and his life in Chesham at our Zoom- based AGM.
Our seats were in the circle with a very good view of the stage.
Martin Sheen was wonderful as Nye, appearing in all the scenes dressed in his hospital pyjamas and seemingly bewildered as each scene unfolded before him in random order, as a schoolboy with a stutter, then his fights with Winston Churchill, his open marriage relationship with Jennie Lee and the death of his father (a Welsh miner). Finally he remembers his creation of the National Health Service against very high odds, only winning against the doctor’s opposition by promising them to make them the highest paid professionals in the country (“Filling their mouths with gold”).
The staging was quite clever, the green curtains reminding one of those in a hospital and also acting as the green seats of the House of Commons, whilst hospital beds were transformed into lobby entrances during the parliamentary scenes.
We found our coach at 5:15 and our driver fought his way through the rush hour traffic to get us back to Gerrards Cross by about 6:30 – well behind those who had travelled by train!
I think that everyone had a really good time.