An exhausted nurse chats between shifts; an Indian surgeon in a British hospital reflects on English attitudes to immigration; an old man finds himself about to experience the full meaning of the promise of healthcare “from cradle to grave”.

The Greatest Wealth – In Celebration of the NHS
Old Vic YouTube channel

An exhausted nurse chats between shifts; an Indian surgeon in a British hospital reflects on English attitudes to immigration; an old man finds himself about to experience the full meaning of the promise of healthcare “from cradle to grave”.

These scenes feel very current, but were written in 2018 for The Greatest Wealth – In Celebration of the NHS, a set of monologues, each reflecting one of the first eight decades of the National Health Service’s existence. Enhanced topicality from the Covid emergency has led to recordings being streamed on the theatre’s YouTube site, with the addition of a new work set now.

“First, Do No Harm” – written by Booker Prize winner Bernardine Evaristo and recorded by Sharon D. Clarke in an empty Old Vic on 29 June – personifies the NHS as a proud and powerful female spirit of birth, life and death. She contains aspects of goddesses of wellbeing in Greek, Hindu and other cultures, and also, as she calls them, “Sister Florence Nightingale and Mother Mary Seacole”. This metaphorical soul is addressing an invisible rally of right-wingers, committed to privatising UK medicine, pleading with them to “go home and leave me alone!”

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