Michael Sheen to Star as Owain Glyndŵr in New Play — SkimNews
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- Michael Sheen will play Owain Glyndŵr in "Owain & Henry" at the Donald Gordon theatre at Wales Millennium Centre — the second biggest stage in Europe — with the show produced by his company Welsh National Theatre and co-produced by the Centre.
- Gary Owen, the Olivier award-winning Welsh playwright, wrote the sweeping version of the Glyndŵr story during the Covid lockdown, when, as Sheen put it, he 'thought, no one's going to ever see this play anyway, so I might as well write it the way I want to write it.'
- Michael Sheen said he was never taught Welsh history or about Glyndŵr growing up in south Wales, noting the rebel was voted the second most important Welsh person of all time — behind only NHS architect Aneurin Bevan — yet 'nobody's ever done anything about him on this scale before.'
- Owain Glyndŵr was, in Sheen's telling, an 'unlikely rebel' born into privilege who served English noblemen and fought for Richard II before a land dispute with neighbour Reginald de Grey escalated into treason accusations and forced him into revolt.
- Michael Sheen explicitly linked the play to current politics, arguing that Plaid Cymru's recent Welsh Senedd election win — ending 100 years of Labour rule — had put 'two very different visions' of Welsh identity and nationhood in play, making the 15th-century story newly urgent.
- Sheen said he had invited the new Plaid administration to engage with him over the dumping of toxic waste in Wales, a subject from his documentary, but 'as yet, that has not happened.'
Why it matters: Sheen is using his profile to address the scarcity of ambitious Welsh plays for large stages, staging the first major dramatisation of a figure voted Wales's second-greatest historical person. The production lands at a genuine political inflection point: Plaid Cymru's election ended a century of Labour dominance, giving Welsh-identity debates a new platform — and giving Sheen a real audience to press Welsh ministers on toxic-waste dumping as well as theatre.
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