The Human Body

A play of political and private passions, set in the 1940s against a backdrop of the foundation of the NHS. Premiered at the Donmar Warehouse, London, in 2024.

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'The window for change – real change I mean – will close. It's already closing. Very soon it will be shut, and we shan't be able to get it open again.'



1948, Shropshire: the winter is freezing, austerity is biting and Iris Elcock, GP, socialist and Labour Party councillor, is working tirelessly to implement Nye Bevan's National Health Service Act and its revolutionary promise of free healthcare for all.



At home she is a mother, and wife to a fellow GP, an ex-Navy man scarred by the war. But a chance meeting with George Blythe, a local boy who has made it to Hollywood, turns her quiet, certain world upside down.



A story of political and private passions, Lucy Kirkwood's play The Human Body was first performed at the Donmar Warehouse, London, in 2024, directed by Michael Longhurst and Ann Yee, and starring Keeley Hawes and Jack Davenport.



'Kirkwood is the most rewarding dramatist of her generation' Independent