The Promise at Chichester’s Minerva Theatre – review

Nye Bevan is the celebrated Welsh MP that gave birth to our modern NHS, most recently brought to vivid life by Michael Sheen at the National. But Bevan was not alone in radically trying to change the post-war political landscape after Labour won the landslide victory of 1945 over Winston Churchill’s Conservative party.

In a general election year that has seen an even larger Labour landslide, the parallels to today are clear, and in Paul Unwin’s new play that plots the emergence of the NHS, there is no subtlety in making sure that we are fully aware of each of them. Palestine, train strikes, financial crises and housebuilding all get a mention. It’s dizzyingly familiar but the point is rather hammered home a little too laboriously.

As Clement Attlee’s government set to work on the recovery of Great Britain following the harrowing years spent in a wartime coalition with Churchill, it was Ellen Wilkinson, the firebrand and ex-communist who was also an agitator and perhaps the loudest of socialist voices that would help to change our health, housing and welfare state forever.

Clare Burt’s ‘Red’ Ellen, opens with an impassioned conference speech, rallying her comrades towards a Labour victory. “We may never get the chance of getting into power again,” she cries. Well, that was hardly clairvoyant, but gain power and make changes they did.

Unwin’s muddled text sprawls across two years, and whilst there is a vague focus on the creation of the NHS, so much other ground is covered that it isn’t always clear if this is a play about the Labour Party, Ellen Wilkinson or perhaps Clement Attlee. Jonathan Kent’s production does nothing to hone the drama either with a stage that, although sparse in Joanna Parker’s design, still manages to feel chaotic and frantic too often.

Richard Harrington’s dishevelled Nye Bevan imperceptibly betrays his socialist roots as his suits get crisper and his black-market tastes get richer. Andrew Woodall’s uptight Clem Attlee reveals a Prime Minister that is short on the economics of government and not necessarily blessed with the empathy of a great leader. Like so many men of power and influence, it is his wife, Violet (Suzanne Burdan) who supports and protects him, whilst the sharks are ever circling in the shape of leadership contender Herbert Morrison (Reece Dinsdale) and his cronies of the Party.

The wordiness of Unwin’s writing – combined with the bluntness of Kent’s direction – leaves one feeling rather disappointed that the idealists who did so much good for the country, all seem to be quite unlikeable and seemingly do nothing but shout at one another.

The concept of a nationalised health service that is free at the point of need, was once radical. As Burt’s ferocious Wilkinson observes though, future governments may not always be able to afford it. And on the same day that it appears as though the new Labour government has settled the junior doctors strike, that’s where the drama really sits, in the now. It’s a timely and relevant tale to tell, but drifts too aimlessly to match its own promise.