The spirit of Nye Bevan floats over Alan Harris’s monologue for National Theatre Wales. The architect of the NHS is there in the historic leaflet Hannah Daniel’s Nyri finds among her late mother’s belongings, promising medical care free at the point of use for the first time. And he’s there in the uncritical attention the doctors give to the same actor’s Clara, a vulnerable young woman who has set herself on fire during a shoplifting expedition.
The politician even gives Nyri a drug-induced visitation, urging her to fulfil the service’s founding promise to care for all who need it, despite bureaucratic pressure for her to do otherwise.
Switching deftly into the character of Clara, a cheery soul despite her tendency to see suicidal messages everywhere she looks, the actor represents two sides of the care system. On one hand are the patients, many having little control over their own impulses let alone how – or even whether – they are looked after. On the other are the nurses, forever at the mercy of managerial shortcuts that threaten to upturn the universal principles set down in 1948. Both have their hands tied.
Holding on to the values that lead her to care for her 15-year-old son and her dying mother, Nyri takes back control over the care of Clara in an act of public-spirited rebellion.
Yes, her small act of vengeance on the woman luring both Clara and her son into a life of crime seems too good to be true. And, yes, the script is limited in its political range. But in Jac Ifan Moore’s clean, spare production, Daniel is bright, lucid and engaging, bringing life to Harris’s vivid script.
• At Summerhall, Edinburgh, until 25 August.
