BWW Reviews: ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST, Lost Theatre, March 15 2012

The greatest asset of this production, marking the 50th anniversary of the publication of Ken Kesey's seminal novel satirising the USA of Dwight D Eisenhower, is also its greatest challenge - how can the extraordinary 1975 film adaptation be expelled from the minds of the audience to allow Dale Wasserman's 1963 stage version to breathe?

Nurse Ratched (Annabel Capper), as starched and antiseptically clean as the ward she runs under an iron fist clad in a velvet glove, coldly dispenses "therapy" to her cowed male patients and terrorises the staff into sullen obedience to her wishes. Nobody confronts her tyranny - the staff know that they can be assigned duties in the shit and piss of the geriatric ward and the patients know that electro-shock treatment (and worse) can be ordered "for their own good". Enter Randle P McMurphy (Sean Buchanan), a ne'er do well chancer who fancies a hospital ward more than the penitentiary work farm. Quiet order is quite suddenly anarchic disorder.

Of course, the irony - and Kesey's point - is that the therapy the patients need is not the tranquillisers and group confessionals of the Big Nurse, but McMurphy's call for the men to discover their own individuality, their own needs and desires and then to revel in the freedom of acting on such drives. No patient is more liberated than Chief Bromden, the previously mute Native American, whose sham is quickly rumbled by McMurphy, whom he silently worships thenceforth.

So does Paul Taylor-Mills' production meet the considerable challenge set above? Annabel Capper's Nurse Ratched has the rictus smile and oily persuasiveness demanded of the part, but lacks a little of the icy ruthlessness to convince as McMurphy's nemesis. Sean Buchanan's McMurphy has the charm and the antic disposition of a force of nature, but never really connects with the Chief, weakening a key element of the plot. On the other hand, there are strong performances from the supporting players, with Lee Colley's stuttering bullied Billy and Bradley Rhys Williams' pompous, but ultimately decent, Dale Harding the standouts.

It is, of course, utterly unfair to compare a play to a film - and this production stands perfectly well on its own two feet - but I never shook off my memory's images of Jack Nicholson and Louise Fletcher (that both principals wore the same outfits as their counterparts in the film didn't help). Having said that, the film's legion fans will enjoy this revival at a time when Kesey's questions about what constitutes real freedom are as pertinent as ever.

One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest is at Lost Theatre until 31 March.  

 

   

 

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