Cuckoo's Nest

June 14, 2005

A standing-room-only crowd greeted the “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” cast on opening night June 10 at the TCA. The tragi-comic tension ratcheted up as the audience watched David Garver’s electrically charged Randle P. McMurphy (see photo) challenge the stolid solid smiling Barbara Duff’s Big Nurse (Ratchet). Even as McMurphy offers his new friends, a tribe of loonies, an antidote to black-hole life in the bin, Big Nurse manipulates the tribe the way Karl Rove takes on Democrats in public but fixes voting machines behind the scenes. As the highly charged Irishman loses wattage, his buddies light up, freed from their blinders. The electricity passes through the circuits to charge up the gang that gets away. Between Ratchet/McMurphy bouts, Chief Bromden, portrayed by Robert Mirabal, dreams and prays to his ancestors. Mirabal’s performance takes full advantage of his well-known charisma and experience to portray the heroic and emotionally moving Bromden as beneficiary of McMurphy’s mission. By the end of show, not only had the audience begun clapping at the end of each scene, but at the play’s end they slowly rose and gave the cast and crew a standing ovation.

But what really lifts the Old Taos Players’ performance—produced by Barbara Duff, David Garver and Andrew Flack—above most community productions is the breadth and depth of the ensemble cast. Director Ron Usherwood has cast the parts with nary a weakness or misstep in this stage adaptation of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.” Frequently, the leading men and women of a show steal the headlines and get all the press. But in “Cuckoo’s Nest” the superb ensemble fulfilled the implied promise between cast and audience.

First, Ken MacNamara, as Harding, gave a riveting and disciplined performance in a testament to subtlety and the actor’s craft. Timothy Blevins played Cheswick with broad strokes, using his plastic-elastic face and body to showcase a talent for physical comedy. While emphasizing Billy Bibbit’s fragility and fear, actor Kristian Moore disappeared into the rutting stuttering mama’s boy. Stephen Moser’s Scanlon and Peter Micelli’s Martini maintained their shtick throughout the show in a display of bravado that paralleled Ed Bell’s own catatonic Christ figure nailed to the wall. Greg Vose played a mean-spirited aide and whipped the inmates around the stage like a mean sonofabitch. Who can forget the ladies of the night? The light-footed sexy Candy, played by Susan Nuss, and her sultry sidekick, Sandy, played by Les Lokey, lit up the loonies like the Euclid, Ohio, Lion’s Club attending a convention at Hooter’s. Sidemen and women—Damon Kallsen as another attendant, Stefanya Olynyk as Nurse Flinn, and Greg Chase as Dr. Spivey—fill out the roster as the patients and their keepers choose up sides under the auspices of Nurse Ratchet and Randle P. McMurphy. David Nichols’ realistic set provided the perfect ring for Duff, Garver, Mirabal and their cast of spirits. By the way, consummate talent Steve Parks does a wonderful turn as the night aide with some hotch and a tune that exemplifies the depth of the cast. Kudos to Sara Basehart for costume design that underscores the transformation of McMurphy and his cohorts.

On page 15, Horse Fly Review, contributor Justin Bailey reviews Ken Kesey’s iconic contribution to literature. Here’s a caveat: If you have read the novel and/or seen the movie, try to put those images out of your mind so you can enjoy the play. The Old Taos Players present an entertaining version of this Kesey legacy and an opportunity for all of us to rejoice in a job well done by those who are keeping community theater alive. --Bill Whaley

A Brief History of the Bird Brain

Upon the announcement that The Old Taos Players were putting on a big community theatre production of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” a few questions came to mind. For starters, why bother? Didn’t they already do that a long time ago? Can’t you rent the movie for two bucks? Isn’t Robert Mirabal, our Native American rock star celebrity, kind of busy touring around the world or something? Hasn’t it been more than 30 years since the sixties ended? Aren’t we in a new century now?

Boiled down, “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” is a parable about revolution. The story describes a system with a tyrant in charge, who maintains control over her subjects by keeping them tranquilized and scared. Along comes the insurgent, Randal P. McMurphy, whose initials are RPM. The mental-ward setting is a microcosm of a repressive society, and the boisterous McMurphy, played in the local stage production by David Garver, does whatever he can to liberate it.

Originally published in 1962, when women still wore their hair in that beehive shape, the novel “One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest” was ahead of its time. In a way, it prophesied the mayhem to come. The book was a hit, and within a couple of years author Ken Kesey did his bit to bring the chaos of the sixties about, by leading his band of Merry Pranksters around the country in the original psychedelic bus, giving acid to anyone who would take it.

Kesey’s novel was inspired by his early experiences with LSD in clinical trials, before lysergic acid was illegal, or even known to the general public. According to some accounts, he wrote parts of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” while under the influence of LSD, but back then all his neurons were still firing. The book dealt with questions of authority vs. rebellion, culture vs. counterculture, drudgery vs. fun, and who’s insane—the subjects of the system or the people in charge? These issues have been on the collective American mind since before the founding fathers were picking hemp out of their teeth.

The stage play version of “Cuckoo’s Nest,” adapted from the novel by Dale Wasserman, got a shaky start on Broadway in 1974, with a bad review in the New York Times. It closed quickly. Wasserman was more or less a hired hack, brought onboard by Kirk Douglas who’d purchased the stage and film rights to the novel. Douglas commissioned a completely different script for the film, which was produced by his son, Michael. Kesey disliked the film script so much he sued, which indicates that not only had Kesey overcooked his brain on the “Furthur” bus, but also that his genius had been overtaken by his ego. Which is tragic, because with his talent, he could have been the Melville or the Faulkner of the late 20th century, he could have written 10 or 20 masterpieces, he could have reworked the collective consciousness. Anyway, the movie swept all the major Academy Awards in 1975, made a boatload of money, and it remains a classic. That’s the story behind the story of “Cuckoo’s Nest”; it’s all very historical, canonical, tragicomic, and, like, way back when.

But in Taos, at least, “Cuckoo’s Nest” is still relevant. It’s become a local cliché that Taos folk are nutty, flaky, or fruity. That may or may not be the case; nevertheless we do live in sort of a time warp: here, it seems like the sixties began hundreds of years ago; and for some locals, the decade of peace, love, and the Manson Family will go on forever. --Justin Bailey