Play about NHS creator Nye Bevan is among 12 new National Theatre plays

A sculpture of Aneurin Bevan, the founder of the NHS, overlooks the town clock in his hometown of Tredegar in south Wales. Photograph: Huw Fairclough/Getty

A play charting the life of Nye Bevan and his battle to create the NHS is among 12 new productions that have been announced by the National Theatre.

Nye, by Tim Price, was described by the National as a “Welsh fantasia [that] is both epic and deeply personal”. It will star Michael Sheen and be directed by Rufus Norris, the National’s artistic director who’s stepping down in 2025.

“After the turmoil of recent years, we all appreciate how vital the NHS is,” said Norris. The play would “illuminate the life of its founder and celebrate its centrality within British life”.

Bevan, a miner’s son from south Wales, was the architect of the 1948 National Health Service Act that allowed people access to medical diagnosis and treatment, free at the point of use. The creation of the NHS is considered the most significant reform in the history of the Labour party.

Nye will open in February 2024.

Harriet Walter will take the title role in The House of Bernarda Alba. Photograph: Eamonn McCormack/Getty for Bafta

Among the other productions is The House of Bernarda Alba, a new play by Alice Birch after Federico García Lorca. It tells the story of five sisters living under their mother’s tight grip.

Harriet Walter will play the matriarch in a “devastatingly dark and comic drama exploring the consequences of oppressing women”. The play will be directed by Rebecca Frecknall in her debut at the National.

London Tide, based on Charles Dickens’s Our Mutual Friend, was a “love letter to London”, said Norris.

The National described it as “a gothic masterpiece of murder, redemption, love and money … Urgent questions of inequality, the right to an education and the possibility of forgiveness collide in a hymn to the city and the river that runs through it.”

The play includes original songs written by PJ Harvey.

In the Dorfman theatre, from September, there will be the final instalment of the Death of England series of dramas, created by Clint Dyer and Roy Williams, which originated with a Guardian and Royal Court microplay online in 2014. Death of England: Closing Time will star Jo Martin and Hayley Squires in an exploration of family dynamics, race, colonialism and cancel culture.