Alan Bennett: 'Allelujah! is affectionate about the NHS but not those trying to privatise it'

Alan Bennett insisted his new play is an “affectionate” portrayal of the National Health Service despite its depiction of a hospital in crisis.

Allelujah!, his first play in six years, is set on the geriatric ward of the Beth — an under threat local hospital offering cradle-to-grave care for the inhabitants of a small Yorkshire town.

Bennett, who reunites with long-time collaborator Nicholas Hytner on the show at the Bridge Theatre, said: “It’s very affectionate about the National Health Service and it’s very unaffectionate about the people who are trying to privatise it or remedy it in the wrong way.”

The play pits a local boy made good as a political consultant— who wants to close the hospital — against its staff and patients, while one nurse has her own method to ensure a ward has a rapid turnover.

Bennett, 84, who said some of his own experiences in hospital had influenced the story, said he thought people knew the NHS was superior to the American system of private care.

“It’s the heart of being English and it’s one of the few things where we spell out feelings, where we join together and it’s almost as difficult to define as being English,” he said. “People know in their bones it’s right, I’m sure that’s true.”

The play also takes in a story about an immigrant doctor overstaying his visa, and Bennett said the show, which he wrote last year, had “become topical”.

He added: “Events have caught up with it really. There have been so many hospital scandals and then the Windrush business, but all this was written long before.”

Bennett praised director Hytner for bringing out the best from its cast of veteran actors playing elderly patients. He said: “I put in the script about old people erupting on to the stage and singing but I never imagined them doing all the dancing, that’s his concept and I thought it was wonderful. He makes my work much more fun...I think of these people as the old ladies but they are all of them younger than me, but they have much more energy than I have.

“I couldn’t do what they do, they work so hard as well, I envy them the dancing - I’ve never been able to dance.”

Allelujah! runs at the Bridge Theatre until September 29, bridgetheatre.co.uk