By Dale Wesserman
Based on the novel by Ken Kesey

Directed by Tommy Jackson

 

This brutal struggle was directly adapted from Ken Kesey's classic anti-authoritarian novel, One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest by Dale Wesserman who also wrote Man of La Mancha. On Broadway, Kirk Douglas created the role of Randall P. McMurphy later made famous by Jack Nicholson in the multi-award winning film directed by Milos Forman. McMurphy is a charming rogue who contrives to serve a short sentence in an airy mental institution rather than in a prison. This, he learns, was a mistake. Nurse Ratched runs the state mental hospital with an iron hand, but the new patient, McMurphy, arrives and soon shatters the pretenses of conformity. Laughter replaces anger; parties replace pills, but just as spirits start to soar, the birds' wings are clipped. McMurphy become ensnared in a number of power-games with Nurse Ratched for the hearts and minds of the inmates. Far from being a place of healing, the hospital is a place of fear. McMurphy leads a group of inmates on the ward to rebel against the repressive Nurse Ratched, who has defeated past troublemakers with electro-shock therapy, or with lobotomies, making patients docile members of society at the expense of their individuality. All the time, however, the question is in the mind as to just how sane any of the players in the actually are. This uproariously moving classic is a powerful exploration of both the beauty and danger of an individual who thinks outside the box. Eventually the battle becomes not one between patient and nurse, but between liberation and restriction, life and lifelessness, and ultimately good and evil. According to critics the play is "scarifying and powerful; funny, touching and exciting; brilliant; the stuff of great theatre; one of the finest, most meaningful and most moving plays of recent times