The National Health is a play by Peter Nichols

Peter Nichols

Peter Nichols FRSL is an English writer of stage plays, film and television.Born in Bristol, England, he was educated at Bristol Grammar School, and served his compulsory National Service as a clerk in Calcutta and later in the Combined Services Entertainments Unit in Singapore where he...

. Reminiscent of the Carry On

Carry On films

The Carry On films are a series of low-budget British comedy films, directed by Gerald Thomas and produced by Peter Rogers. They are an energetic mix of parody, farce, slapstick and double entendres....

film series, this black comedy

Black comedy

A black comedy, or dark comedy, is a comic work that employs black humor or gallows humor. The definition of black humor is problematic; it has been argued that it corresponds to the earlier concept of gallows humor; and that, as humor has been defined since Freud as a comedic act that anesthetizes...

 with tragic overtones focuses on the appalling conditions in an under-funded national health hospital

Hospital

A hospital is a health care institution providing patient treatment by specialized staff and equipment. Hospitals often, but not always, provide for inpatient care or longer-term patient stays....

, which are contrasted comically with a Dr. Kildare

Dr. Kildare

Dr. James Kildare is a fictional character, the primary character in a series of American theatrical films in the late 1930s and early 1940s, an early 1950s radio series, a 1960s television series of the same name and a comic book based on the TV show, and a short-lived 1970s television series...

-style soap opera

Soap opera

A soap opera, sometimes called "soap" for short, is an ongoing, episodic work of dramatic fiction presented in serial format on radio or as television programming. The name soap opera stems from the original dramatic serials broadcast on radio that had soap manufacturers, such as Procter & Gamble,...

 airing on the ward television.

Originally entitled The End Beds, the play – based on hospitals in which Nichols was treated for a collapsed lung – originally was written for television, but the playwright

Playwright

A playwright, also called a dramatist, is a person who writes plays.The term is not a variant spelling of "playwrite", but something quite distinct: the word wright is an archaic English term for a craftsman or builder...

 received no enthusiastic response from anyone to whom he submitted it. When Kenneth Tynan

Kenneth Tynan

Kenneth Peacock Tynan was an influential and often controversial English theatre critic and writer.-Early life:...

 and Laurence Olivier

Laurence Olivier

Laurence Kerr Olivier, Baron Olivier, OM was an English actor, director, and producer. He was one of the most famous and revered actors of the 20th century. He married three times, to fellow actors Jill Esmond, Vivien Leigh, and Joan Plowright...

 approached him to write a play for the National Theatre

Royal National Theatre

The Royal National Theatre in London is one of the United Kingdom's two most prominent publicly funded theatre companies, alongside the Royal Shakespeare Company...

, Nichols offered them the slightly revised work, retitled The National Health. It premiered in 1969 and proved to be a critical and commercial success, named Best New Play by the Evening Standard

Evening Standard

The Evening Standard, now styled the London Evening Standard, is a free local daily newspaper, published Monday–Friday in tabloid format in London. It is the dominant regional evening paper for London and the surrounding area, with coverage of national and international news and City of London...

. The BBC

BBC

The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...

 then asked Nichols if he would like to adapt the play for a television production.

In 1973, Nichols adapted his play for a film version

The National Health (film)

The National Health is a 1973 British comedy film directed by Jack Gold and starring Lynn Redgrave, Colin Blakely and Eleanor Bron. It is based on the play The National Health by Peter Nichols, in which the staff struggle to cope in an underfunded NHS hospital...

 directed by Jack Gold

Jack Gold

Jack Gold is a British film and television director. He was part of the British Realist Tradition that followed Free Cinema.-Career:...

. It starred Jim Dale

Jim Dale

Jim Dale, MBE is an English actor, voice artist, singer and songwriter. He is best known in the United Kingdom for his many appearances in the Carry On series of films and in the US for narrating the Harry Potter audiobook series, for which he received two Grammy Awards, and the ABC series Pushing...

, Bob Hoskins

Bob Hoskins

Robert William "Bob" Hoskins, Jr. is an English actor known for playing Cockney rough diamonds, psychopaths and gangsters, in films such as The Long Good Friday , and Mona Lisa , and lighter roles in family films such as Who Framed Roger Rabbit and Hook .- Early life :Hoskins was born in Bury St...

, Lynn Redgrave

Lynn Redgrave

Lynn Rachel Redgrave, OBE was an English actress.A member of the well-known British family of actors, Redgrave trained in London before making her theatrical debut in 1962...

, Donald Sinden

Donald Sinden

Sir Donald Alfred Sinden CBE is an English actor of theatre, film and television.-Personal life:Sinden was born in Plymouth, Devon, England, on 9 October 1923. The son of Alfred Edward Sinden and his wife Mabel Agnes , he grew up in the Sussex village of Ditchling, where their home doubled as the...

, Clive Swift

Clive Swift

Clive Walter Swift is an English character comedy actor and songwriter. He is best known for his role as character Richard Bucket in the British television series Keeping Up Appearances. He is less known for his role as character Roy in the British television series The Old Guys...

, Mervyn Johns

Mervyn Johns

Mervyn Johns was a Welsh film and television character actor. He was a mainstay of Ealing Studios.Among his dozens of film roles were Walter Craig in Dead of Night , the Church Warden in Went the Day Well? and Bob Cratchit in Scrooge...

, Eleanor Bron

Eleanor Bron

Eleanor Bron is an English stage, film and television actress and author.-Early life and family:Bron was born in 1938 in Stanmore, Middlesex, to a Jewish family of Eastern European origin...

, Gillian Barge

Gillian Barge

Gillian Barge was an English stage, television and film actress.She was born in Hastings, Sussex and she started acting at the age of 17, training at the Birmingham Theatre School....

, and Colin Blakely

Colin Blakely

Colin George Blakely was a Northern Irish character actor. He was considered an actor of great range.-Early life:...

. It won the Evening Standard British Film Award for Best Comedy.

After 23 previews, the Broadway production

Broadway theatre

Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...

, produced by Theodore Mann

Theodore Mann

Theodore Mann, birth name Goldman, is an American theatre producer and director and the Artistic Director of the Circle in the Square Theatre School....

 and directed by Arvin Brown

Arvin Brown

Arvin Brown is an American theatre and television director and was the Artistic Director of the Long Wharf Theatre in New Haven, Connecticut for 30 years. He was married to actress Joyce Ebert until her death in 1997....

, opened on October 10, 1974 at the Circle in the Square Theatre

Circle in the Square Theatre

The Circle in the Square Theatre is a legitimate Broadway theatre in midtown Manhattan on 50th Street in the Paramount Plaza building.The original Circle in the Square was founded by Paul Libin, Theodore Mann and Jose Quintero in 1951 and was located at 5 Sheridan Square in Greenwich Village...

, where it ran for only 53 performances, its subject matter too perplexingly foreign even for sophisticated theater-goers. The cast included Leonard Frey

Leonard Frey

- Biography :Frey was born in Brooklyn, New York. After college, where he studied art with designs on being a painter, he studied acting at New York City's prestigious Neighborhood Playhouse under famed acting coach Sanford Meisner, and pursued a career in theater instead...

, Olivia Cole

Olivia Cole

Olivia Cole is an American actress.-Biography:Cole was born in Memphis, Tennessee, the daughter of Arvelia and William Cole. She was the first African-American actress to be nominated for and subsequently win an Emmy Award...

, Rita Moreno

Rita Moreno

Rita Moreno is a Puerto Rican singer, dancer and actress. She is the only Hispanic and one of the few performers who have won an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar, and a Tony, and was the second Puerto Rican to win an Academy Award....

, and Paul Rudd

Paul Rudd

Paul Stephen Rudd is an American actor and screenwriter. He has primarily appeared in comedies, and is known for his roles in the films Clueless, Wet Hot American Summer, Anchorman, Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers, The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Knocked Up, Dinner for Schmucks, The Object of My...

. Tony Award

Tony Award

The Antoinette Perry Award for Excellence in Theatre, more commonly known as a Tony Award, recognizes achievement in live Broadway theatre. The awards are presented by the American Theatre Wing and The Broadway League at an annual ceremony in New York City. The awards are given for Broadway...

 nominations went to the play, Brown, and Frey; the play also received a Drama Desk Award

Drama Desk Award

The Drama Desk Awards, which are given annually in a number of categories, are the only major New York theater honors for which productions on Broadway, Off-Broadway, Off-Off-Broadway compete against each other in the same category...

nomination as Outstanding New Foreign Play.