Sheen in element as NHS founder say theatre critics

Michael Sheen has been praised by critics for his performance as Nye Bevan, in a National Theatre production.Nye tells the story of the left-wing politician who was credited with being the founder of the modern day National Health Service.

The FT's four-star review said Sheen delivered an "electrifying performance driven by a fantastic ensemble".

It also praised the staging, noting the "canny set design of sliding hospital curtains to send scenes tumbling over one another as they do in dream".

However Sarah Hemming added that we "don't get enough of an up-close study of Bevan the man, or when the Labour party heaved the welfare state into being".

The Guardian's Arifa Akbar agreed and wrote that the pacing of the script was off, and "the momentous invention of the NHS is tackled, as if in summary, in the last half hour".

She added that the "narrative is too long-reaching and schematic" and the well researched material is "not fully absorbed dramatically".

But she complemented the Welsh actor who "brings a furious fey playfulness and vulnerability" to his character.

The story of Nye is told in a series of flashbacks as a morphine-induced Bevan lies in a hospital bed battling terminal stomach cancer in 1960.

Through hallucinations we see everything from Nye being bulled by his teacher as a young boy for his stammer, to his beginnings in local council politics, all the way to his lone vocal opposition against Churchill during the war.

The Telegraph's four-star review said Sheen "is in his element here too - by turns down to earth and messianic, tender and full of clenched tenacity" and that "the death-bed climax is rousingly poignant".

Dominic Cavendish also praised the rest of the cast "with fine work especially from Sharon Small, as his self-sacrificing wife Jennie Lee" who was also an MP for a number of years.

Aneurin Bevan was born in Tredegar, Wales in 1897 into a large mining family and left school at 13 to work in the mine.

By 19 he was active in trade unionism and was head of his local miners' lodge, becoming a well-known orator and social commentator.

He became a councillor on Monmouth County Council in 1928, then a member of parliament for Ebbw Vale in 1929. His maiden speech was an attack on Winston Churchill, who he saw as the main enemy of the miners.

Bevan married a fellow left-wing Labour MP, Jennie Lee, in 1934. They had no children.

In 1945 the Labour Party won the general election. As Minister for Health and Housing, Bevan created the National Health Service on 5 July 1948.

In 1955 he ran for the leadership of the party but was defeated by Hugh Gaitskill.

In 1959 he was elected deputy leader of the Labour Party, but died in 1960 of cancer.

Some critics were overall less positive of the production, with the Independent's three-star review calling the premise a "tired theatrical set-up, to have an ageing famous figure reliving his life in convenient vignettes".Despite the "saggy texts", Alice Saville wrote that director Rufus Norris manages to "keeps things nimble and strange".

The Evening Standard's review criticised the script by Tim Price, and said it was "lumpy and obvious".

"The comparisons Price draws between self-serving, right-wing politicians then and now feel heavy-handed," he added.

Nonetheless, Nick Curtis noted that Sheen's "charisma, along with goodwill toward the NHS, gets Rufus Norris's playfully earnest co-production over the line".