What better time to consider the idea that British society could be reimagined and look at the beginnings of the welfare state? Last week Lucy Kirkwood Human body It presented a tumultuous version of post-World War II life through the eyes of a female doctor. Now Tim Price’s new play, co-produced with the Wales Millennium Centre, looks at the inspiring achievements of Aneurin “Nye” Bevan, the fierce Welsh Labor advocate who founded the NHS. This is a wasted opportunity.
New It’s a fever dream. The drama, which begins in 1960 with 62-year-old Bevan in a hospital bed, returns in chapters: through union and local council activities, to school days and memories of the miner father dying of pneumoconiosis (“black lung” disease). To the magnificent transformation work that made him a guide of the left as the minister of health.
The form is fragmented, dizzying: Vicki Mortimer’s design does a fine job of hallucinatory blending; effortlessly transfers the corporate green of hospital curtains to the ranks of the House of Commons. But the dialogue is tenacious and instructive that will catch you by the collar. Interesting details turn into mechanical explanations: Bevan’s father’s suffering inherited a desire to care for everyone; A teacher’s terrible bullying awakened in him a sense of injustice.
Sheen’s performance is fiery but not indulgent; reveals the strength of the man and his mumbling, self-mocking humor
The theatrical equivalent of the nervous giggle felt by someone hearing bad news, Rufus Norris’s production is mired in a lurid playfulness that goes beyond conveying the strangeness of fire. At any given moment the furniture begins to move. Hospital beds are constantly being lifted, allowing residents to stand upright. When Clement Attlee (played by Stephanie Jacob, who looks startlingly like Margaret Thatcher) persuades Bevan to take his medical briefing, his desk swings around the stage to corner him. Doctors who resist the idea of the NHS, Tory politicians with dour faces and over-vowels, are the villains who suddenly appear.
Bevan belonged to this interesting group: fluent stutterers. Jonathan Miller, Christopher Hitchens and Observer‘s Philip French were other shining members. New He convincingly shows that the orator’s famous eloquence was a direct result of the hardship that made his early life miserable. Trying to avoid words starting with unpronounceable consonants, he plundered books to find synonyms and acquired a rich vocabulary.
In an excellent program article, Neil Kinnock describes Bevan’s presentation as “a mixture of brief hesitation and categorical emphasis”. Michael Sheen could overdo it with his silky pace; he doesn’t. Her performance is fiery but not indulgent; reveals the man’s strength, the engine of his faith, and — as he courts his future wife, Jennie Lee — his crooning, self-mocking humor (even in baggy, pink pajamas). . Sharon Small’s Lee is a match: fearless, visionary but nervous and regretful that she sacrificed her ambition for the sake of her man’s career. It’s a shame he wasn’t given more of a voice (shouting was what he loved): Lee became a celebrated MP not in spite of being arts minister, but because of it. This seems almost unbelievable now. It’s like the idea of a fully funded healthcare.
Let’s hear from Roy Williams, who leaned towards documentary but took a creative leap forward, whose plays, often focusing on the lives of black British men and women, have captivated and adapted to audiences for 30 years. The country’s situation provided its drama death of englandD; a gripping Radio 4 crime drama, Questioning; a one-off hitter sucker Punch. Now he delivers a vital adaptation of Sam Selvon’s magnificent 1956 novel. Lonely LondonersIt captures moments in the life of the Windrush generation.
Selvon’s wry and clear-eyed fiction is a steady work of history with an extraordinarily flexible and distinctive style. In the Trinidadian dialect, he seems to speak directly from the hearts of his characters; It contains a shaky stream-of-consciousness passage that Virginia Woolf (who did not write in Trinidadian dialect) would envy.
Landlords and employers are slamming doors; children point; friends gather together. The main characters leap off the stage as if off the page. Romario Simpson’s Galahad is a film that’s easy, loud, and pretends to be savvy while mixing up London names like Ladbroke Grave. Gamba Cole as Moses glows with hope and sadness, ushering the new arrivals into his bedroom, teaching them not to look at people’s faces (this scares the white folk) and to catch and cook pigeons. Tobi Bakare, like Lewis, is gloomy and withdrawn: disappointment turns into jealousy; He beats his wife.
Williams gives extra space to the voices of the women chanting nursery rhymes and arguing with the traders in the market, and she captures the men’s camaraderie very well: compelling, testy, and necessary. Ebenezer Bamgboye’s production is fast-paced but softens some sharp edges with flashy slow-motion writhing. Laura Ann Price’s pulsating orange design does not evoke the fog of the ’50s: it does, however, evoke the fever of London’s new citizens, many of whom have been invited to England to work in Bevan’s NHS; many were betrayed.
There is so much to be thankful for hadestownThe musical, composed by Anaïs Mitchell in 2006, lands in the West End after a stint at the National and a huge success on Broadway. This reimagining of the Orpheus and Eurydice myth has invitingly dark, gruff tones, woodwinds, soul, and a killer train number. The booming bassline in which Hell’s boss Zachary James voices his intention to build walls to keep out the undesirables now sounds like prescient electioneering. Gloria Onitiri’s Persephone – with jazz in her voice, a flask in her cleavage and flexible long legs and arms – is a magnet.
Rachel Chavkin’s production pokes the music world, but doesn’t remake it. Dónal Finn and Grace Hodgett Young as Orpheus and Eurydice have sweet voices, but they’re not strong enough to keep the audience from resisting the pull of Hades. The stage is so cramped that Orpheus’ return journey from the underworld looks small and stationary: he might be passing through one of the hairpin queues for the Eurostar.
Star ratings (out of five)
New ★★
Lonely Londoners ★★★★
hadestown ★★★
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New At the Olivier National Theater in London until 11 May
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Lonely Londoners At London’s Jermyn Street Theater until 6 April
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hadestown at London Lyric; Reservation until December 22