The second major show about the founding of the National Health Service currently playing in London, Tim Price's
Nye ends up pretty much where Lucy Kirkwood's
The Human Body began: With the NHS about to be born out of a seemingly impossible, looming deadline, and Britain's doctors only at the last minute putting their voices behind this complete shakeup of their profession. In fact the play seems to squeeze this major event in with almost as much urgency, serving at it does predominantly as a broader biography of the Welsh politician whose brainchild the service was, and who pushed it through opposition from all sides. We meet Aneurin Bevan (The Actor Michael Sheen) in need of the service himself, on his deathbed - though he doesn't know that - on an NHS hospital ward.
