Nye - the impossible made possible

A review of Michael Sheen in Tim Price's new play abut the life of Aneurin Bevan.

The challenge in dramatising the life of a figure who achieved things of greatness is avoiding the mystical assumptions that we are watching the story of a “man of destiny”, that the greatness was pre-ordained. Knowing the outcome of a story undermines the dramatic tension. It is sometimes known as “The Superman Theory” (as in he of Krypton, rather than he of Niestzsche). Where is the drama if you already know the figure of destiny is indestructible? Nye Bevan the union man and husband was no Clark Kent, but Bevan the minister could well have been a Man of Steel. Tim Price’s breathless play, that has Michael Sheen in his pyjamas for three hours, wrestles with the idea of Bevan the man and Bevan the superman, and is ultimately, like Bevan himself, something of a flawed triumph.