Editor-in-chief Peter Wix experiences enhanced access to a London stage triumph that explores the origins of the most universal example of accessibility we have: the NHS.

Caring is a concept nature illustrates as inexhaustibly as it does cruelty and indifference.

And with rampant regularity from a dispassionate distance, humanity puts on a show that covers the spectrum from gory odium to heart-melting tenderness.

As long as the communications end of our culture serves us mostly from the darker ranges, we cannot be surprised if our priorities get confused and the tribe – even the healthcare collective – pays no more than lip service to the idea of legislated compassion for all.

So, when Michael Sheen, as NHS founder Nye Bevan in the splendid National Theatre production Nye, asks his father’s ghost “did I look after everyone?“, his valedictory line types hard with layered and loaded meanings through the claps and welling tears of a standing ovation.

Is this just Bevan, the person, ticking his job-done box? Is it also written as a powerful reminder for today’s NHS audiences that, in pursuing the greatest good, the National…Health…Service – emphatically enunciated in Sheen’s alluring cymric cadence – means everyone looked after? In addition, is it not a rap on our hardened knuckles to underline just what the essence of such a notion as the NHS really is, a creation to put caring before profit, and to include all people?

I was as eager to join my appreciation of the production to that of all who stood and cheered at the National Theatre’s Olivier auditorium. The performance of the entire ably-directed cast struck me as just as excellent as it did to that matinee audience. Sheen, barefoot in his pyjamas throughout, and reminiscing from his dying bed, brilliantly characterises the health minister from childhood to the afterlife, adding supremely to the list of larger-than-life though less magnanimous figures this Welsh actor has played on screen. The production takes us back and forth through time and through the public and private life of Aneurin Bevan, revealing hardships (working in mines, family poverty, suffering bullying as a stammerer,…) that today’s politicians only read about in books (if they even do that), imagining with touches of surreal staging and genuinely stirring choreographed symbolism how the political battle to create the NHS was played out, and outlining what complex sacrifices Bevan’s commitment meant for his wife, MP Jennie Lee, and for close family and friends. As a stage show, its cover of the possibilities of theatre is as comprehensive as the health insurance it unashamedly champions.

 

 

Accessibility to every word through smart caption glasses at the NT

 

The spirit of access for all conveyed throughout Nye is a mission shared by the National Theatre that staged it, as we highlighted in an article by BIHIMA in issue 08 of Audiology News UK.

So my visit gave me a chance to experience the production through the use of smart caption glasses, which I found at a large access desk just outside the entrance to the Olivier seats. I was given a helpful explanation of how to use these by the person at the desk.

Frankly, the glasses are on the cumbersome side, especially if fitting them over your own glasses, and they come weighted down by a track pad/receiver. But if your hearing loss is profound or severe, they will allow you to enjoy the show, and that is a compelling purpose to make allowances for. Live captions run across the lenses, and you can adjust the type size, border, colour, brightness, position, and how the lines run.

Luck would have it that the man sitting in front of me was fitted binaurally with hearing aids (from Costco, and “some time ago”, he revealed with a wry smile). From Portland, Oregon, our friend was more than halfway through an intensive group UK theatre tour of some ten productions and, after this matinee production of Nye, had an evening performance of The Phantom of the Opera awaiting him.

He had not booked to use any caption glasses. I’m normal hearing, so I promised him that I would try the glasses out for ten minutes and then pass them over to him for his opinion.

I let him know that the captions were running with some delay after the actors spoke their lines, which leaves you a little behind the action. Our friend from the USA put the captioning glasses on but then abandoned them shortly afterward. It seems he pressed something on the track pad and couldn’t get the connection back, so naturally he gave up. There is a level of complication.

Back on the access desk, I was told that the NT is making constant efforts to improve the system for the glasses, and that no, they don’t offer perfection. But at least they are there, and the good news is that our congenial theatre buff had no problem following Nye with his aids; the sound in the auditorium at the NT is excellent.

And this gentleman, who of course lives in country where private medicine is very much the norm, turned to me during the standing ovation for Nye, and choked out, tears in his eyes: “Wow! That was quite something!”

He meant the play, I think. But in the context of the private/state health debate and all that Nye had served up for us, I fancied he might well have been referring to the NHS.