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 is premiered at the Donmar Warehouse, London, in February 2024, directed by Michael Longhurst and Ann Yee, and starring Keeley Hawes and Jack Davenport.