National Theatre Wales is dead. Long live the Welsh National Theatre. And long live Michael Sheen.
In December, the former company “ceased to exist” after a protracted saga prompted by the Arts Council of Wales axing its funding, bringing the curtain down on 15 years of English-language state theatre west of Offa’s Dyke. Earlier this month, though, Sheen announced that he would spearhead a new venture fulfilling the same function, and that he would be funding it partly from his own pocket. (Note: Theatr Cymru, the acclaimed Welsh-language national theatre company, is still going strong.)
There has been an outpouring of affection for Sheen as a result, with the 55-year-old actor hailed as a national treasure, a latter-day Laurence Olivier and a rare bright spark in a bleak world. “I hope you find someone who loves you as much as Michael Sheen loves the country of Wales,” read one tweet. “We’re doomed,” read another, “but at least we have Michael Sheen.” Several encouraged the tousle-haired star to emulate one of his most famous characters, Tony Blair, and run for prime minister as well.
It is a sentiment easy to share. As a performer, Sheen is a gifted impersonator (Blair, David Frost, Chris Tarrant, Kenneth Williams and Brian Clough), a compelling character actor capable of whimsy and menace (contrast his performance as Aziraphale in Good Omens with his turn as a serial killer in Prodigal Son) and a captivating theatrical leading man (he has earned acclaim as Romeo, Henry V, Mozart, Jimmy Porter and, in the National Theatre’s returning production of Tim Price’s Nye, Aneurin Bevan).
As a person, his passionate championing of Wales, its sports teams and its artistic culture is infectious. He has been doing the rounds on radio and television over the past week or so, utilising his rich voice to great effect. “This is our country,” he told BBC Radio Wales, in a speech almost as tub-thumpingly invigorating as his World Cup address to the Wales football team three years ago. “This is our culture. This is our history. If we are not prepared to stand up for it and do something about it, we are going to lose it.
”Let’s not get carried away by Sheen’s sonorous rhetoric, though. His infant company has no external funding yet and currently only plans to produce one large-scale show a year, with the first arriving in late 2026. Sheen has big ambitions to do more, but, for the moment, his Welsh National Theatre is little more than inspiring words.
And it is worth scrutinising those words briefly. National theatres are tricky things. Running them, as Nicholas Hytner said, is a delicate balancing act. Scale has to be balanced with finances, artistic ambition with audience expectations, and work that celebrates a national culture with work that asks uncomfortable questions about it. Sheen has spoken a lot about employing Welsh artists and taking Welsh stories to Welsh audiences. Is he prepared to grapple with the knots and nuances involved?
Nor should we forget about the sad fate of National Theatre Wales. The company started strong, with a series of exhilarating site-specific stagings—including a 72-hour Passion Play starring Sheen in his hometown of Port Talbot in 2011—but, by its own admission, had lost its way in recent years. Nevertheless, that Arts Council Wales saw fit to completely defund it, rather than support it through a reinvention, is scandalous.
The cut is part of a bigger, miserable picture. In December, Welsh finance secretary Mark Drakeford announced a £6 million increase in culture spending: a welcome reversal of recent cuts but pocket change in the context of a £26 billion budget, and far too little to reverse the damage done by a decade of standstill funding that has seen the Arts Council Wales budget decrease by 40 per cent in real terms since 2010. Wales’s culture sector is weathering a perfect storm of rising costs and underinvestment, yet a recent report revealed that the Welsh government is second from bottom in the European league table of culture spending. It spends about £70 per capita. Iceland spends £692. Sheen might have deep pockets, but he cannot paper over a crack the size of a canyon.
No, the real hope is not that Sheen can single-handedly save Wales from cultural oblivion, but that he can set an example. Underneath the misty-eyed patriotism evoked by his stirring orations is something else: the refreshing sight of a big star genuinely putting his time, effort and money where his mouth is for once.
Sheen has built a career—and presumably done very well for himself—off the back of the start he was given by state-supported British theatre in the 1990s. Now, he is giving something back. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if other stars that have wandered similar paths—the actors that made their names on subsidised stages before raking in £millions making Marvel movies—emulated him? And—here’s a thought—what about the studios and streaming services that have built lucrative empires with that talent? Perhaps they could plough a percentage of their profits into the artistic ecosystem that sustains them?
Theatre in Wales—and across the UK—is in dire straits. It cannot wash its face commercially, yet our governments are unable or unwilling to stump up the cash to support it. New ideas are needed. Maybe Sheen and his Welsh National Theatre have found one.
